


Your Faith Was Strong But You Needed Proof

by labelladonna99



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Angst, Heroes TV, Heroes: Volume 6, M/M, Post-Brave New World, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Violence, petlar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-27 20:50:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17169161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labelladonna99/pseuds/labelladonna99
Summary: Back in the real world, the adventures begin anew as Peter and Sylar must re-learn how to exist with abilities and other people





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FieryEclipse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FieryEclipse/gifts).



> This is my first attempt at a more action-oriented story so there may be plot-holes. Go ahead and point them out but be nice. :-) I think it can stand alone but FYI, it follows my We Were Wrecks Before We Crashed Into Each Other series. 
> 
> This is dedicated to FieryEclipse whose works have inspired me. :-)

The slim dark-haired woman flicked the television off and laid the remote beside her on the brown leather sofa. She’d seen enough. It was on every news station now, a bizarre carnival gone awry in Central Park. As police and other first responders corralled the scene, a black-clad young woman with her blonde hair in a ponytail scaled the steel spokes of the Ferris wheel. The news cameras followed her like the mesmerized eyes of rubberneckers at a car wreck.

The blonde reached the top of the amusement park ride, stretched her arms out and for one suspended moment, the tension of the crowd was palpable. Then the woman leapt, plummeting in a dizzying black blur lit by the neon carnival floodlights. Within seconds, she had slammed into the ground, prompting gasps and screams from bystanders. For a television equivalent of eternity, the video cameras recorded nothing but the woman lying still and the stunned and horrified silence of onlookers. Then a chorus of indistinct murmuring arose, growing louder and punctuated by cries of “Look!” and “Oh my God!” as the woman lurched to her feet and approached the news cameras. This, Angela Petrelli knew, was going to change everything. 

Whether that was good or bad was too soon to tell. Angela’s dreams had not foretold this part of the evening’s events nor what would come next. Everything else, she had known about. She had been powerless to control any of it though not for lack of trying. She had foreseen how the man named Samuel would attempt to destroy thousands of people, coaxing them to his carnival only to bury them in the earth that he commanded. She had known that her son would intervene and how, with Peter’s blessing, Sylar would be the one to rescue the deaf young woman whose ethereal music was the lure to draw the crowds. And she had dreamt how Peter would die tonight, inadvertently stepping in front of the bullet that Noah Bennet had intended to fire through the back of Sylar’s skull. 

Only that last part had been prevented by her granddaughter’s distraction. For that, despite anything else that might come to pass, Angela was grateful, though she would have some choice words yet for Claire and her foolishness. There was also the question of what Peter intended to do now that Sylar had been allowed to play hero. Angela suspected that before too long, Peter would also be in line for a strict talking-to. 

With the television off, the house was dark and quiet, well insulated from the cacophony of the city beyond the gated and shrub-lined property. It wasn’t completely silent, though. Distant traffic noises and the faint creaks of the house settling competed for Angela’s attention against the soft ticking of the vintage grandfather clock in the hall. The servants had gone for the day and only Millie, the housekeeper, remained, but she was already in bed. The regular rhythm of the clock marking time won out against the other sounds, lulling Angela into drowsiness. She should go up to bed but it was so tempting to curl up here and give in to the insistent beckoning of sleep. 

It was times like this, when sleep stole upon her unforced, that Angela was most likely to dream. Her visions had always arrived without invitation, in taxi cabs, under the dryer in the hair salon, and once, in a church confessional where she and Peter had hidden from Danko’s agents. Sleeping pills and sedatives or one too many glasses of wine had the opposite effect, summoning sleep but curtailing the dreams. Sleep aids were a useful antidote when she needed to suppress her gift, particularly while raising her children. Catastrophic prophecies were hardly conducive to parenting. Now, though, she had no reason to keep her ability at bay.

Oh the dreams were horrible but the power? The knowledge she possessed and how she used it to command lesser mortals, how she manipulated them to stave off disaster? It was indescribable. The horror —  well, it was the price she paid for saving the world. She was no mere Cassandra, cursed to witness but not move the hand of fate. She was more like Zeus, if Zeus had been a five foot five woman of Irish and Italian descent with impeccable taste in fashion, food and home decor.

Fifteen minutes later, Angela awoke with a gasp. Her dreams were efficient. They didn’t require an entire night’s sleep to narrate the future and with each subsequent repetition of a dream, the details would sharpen and the outlines would take on texture, color and certainty. Just now, for perhaps the dozenth time since giving birth to Peter, she’d witnessed his death. It would be Sylar’s doing, unless she stopped it.

It was ironic, tragically so, that the son Angela had actually lost had never died in any of her dreams. It was one of the vagaries of her ability. She wasn’t granted access to every possible future. She hadn’t foreseen any of the political assassinations of the 1960s. The terrorist attack that had ripped a hole in the Manhattan skyline had come as a complete surprise. Worst of all, Angela hadn’t seen Nathan’s death. She had dreamed he was in danger and that Matt Parkman would save him, somehow. What a cruel joke that had been.

That was the way her ability worked. It was a proverbial double-edged sword, a glittering diamond-lined gift on one side and on the other, a bloody nightmare, subject to interpretation either way and shaped by how she wielded her knowledge to influence events. For one thing, it was always personal. However thousands or millions of lives might be wrecked by the tragedies she foresaw, her own life and loved ones were at the center of it all.  She didn’t pretend to understand why her talent wasn’t more definitive, why some events were veiled from her mind’s eye, and she supposed that it was merciful that she didn’t know everything that would happen. Even Angela Petrelli couldn’t handle that much power. It was just so unfair that this capriciousness of her ability had taken Nathan from her, leaving her with more devastation than she knew what to do with. 

Angela dabbed at her eyes, unwilling to smear her mascara even though she was alone, it was late and she wasn’t expecting any visitors. How was it that so much of her life had revolved around protecting her younger child, who seemed to have nine hundred lives, yet it was Nathan who was dead? She hadn’t been the mother she should have been to her adult sons; her ability saw to that. She’d raised them well, taking pride in orchestrating the birthday parties and bedtime stories, instilling morals and manners, providing stability and comfort and doing her best to soften Arthur’s worst dictatorial instincts. But once her boys were grown, Arthur’s pressure to give free reign to the dreams became unrelenting. She had no choice but to dispense with sentimentality and had hardened herself against her sons. It was the only way, or so it had seemed at the time.

Angela wouldn’t surrender her ability if she could. It was what had repeatedly enabled her to spare Peter. It wasn’t that she loved Nathan any less or, God forbid, would have chosen for him to die rather than Peter. She shuddered at the thought of being offered such a Faustian bargain. No, she adored both of her children. If Peter had a slight edge, it was only because he was more fragile than his sharp-witted brother, and, as the dreams had shown her, ill-fated. The knowledge that had allowed her to influence events was the only reason Peter had lived past infancy, survived childhood and made it out of adolescence unscathed. If there were truly multiple realities, as some people believed, then Peter was dead in many of them. In  _ this _ reality, Angela could not lose him, not when he was an innocent baby, a darling daredevil child, a sensitive and passionate teenager and not now, before he’d had a chance to finish becoming the man he was destined to be. Charles, her dear sweet friend, had once told her that Peter would be the most powerful of them all. Angela hadn’t believed it then and was doubtful all over again after Arthur had taken Peter’s original ability. She had since come to question whether Charles’ vision transcended what abilities alone could do.

Angela pressed a corner of her handkerchief to her watering eyes as her worst fear, that fate would finally have its way with Peter, constricted her heart. The worry had been a constant presence since Nathan’s death, a dark cloud that she could no longer pretend was a passing shadow.  _ No, not yet _ , she pleaded silently. Surely Charles’ prophecy had not meant that Peter’s potential would be realized as a consequence of his death. She sent up a selfish prayer that she be spared the pain of living through the loss of both of her children. Since she had no intentions of dying anytime soon, the solution was to put an end to Sylar once and for all.

_ Goddamn Sylar _ . Angela rarely cursed aloud but there was nobody to hear her. She was certainly justified when it came to that man. He was the wellspring of so much suffering and now he had a hold on Peter that Angela didn’t understand. But she would, oh yes. The dreams would take care of that. She had known that Peter would find Sylar and she had failed to prevent their alliance. The nature of that alliance was unclear, except that Peter had somehow persuaded Sylar to help rescue that deaf girl. Making sense of the blurred details was like driving in a rainstorm without windshield wipers, but Angela had never been one to let a little rain stop her.

Where the young woman fit in was another question. She had seemed nice enough, vaguely pretty and unthreatening, but far too mousy for Peter. It would be just like Peter to fall for such a broken-winged little bird when what he needed was someone strong to temper his recklessness. Feeling sleepy again, Angela rose from the couch and made her way upstairs, guided by the light from the outdoor fixtures peeking through the spaces between the drawn window blinds. She’d like to put a stop to any relationship between Peter and that woman but she’d learned that disuadíng Peter from ill-suited romances only brought out his stubborn streak. If she pushed too hard, she’d end up with a deaf daughter in law. No, she would stay out of that one. Let Peter have his little love affair. With any luck, he’d move on or the young woman would dump him. 

Poor Peter had never been lucky in love. Ah well, he would eventually meet the right person. Angela’s job was to keep him alive long enough for him to find her. Claire’s revelation and what it portended for all specials might make that more complicated but that problem would soon be contained, for awhile at least.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’d like to see you, Noah. It’s important.” Angela was seated at a back table near the window of her favorite little French bistro in the east village, sipping champagne though it was hardly past noon. Pedestrians hurried past the window, none of them sparing a glance for the elegant woman on the other side of the glass. A waiter hovered nearby, politely waiting for her to finish her phone call. “Then let me rephrase that.” She spoke into her phone discreetly to avoid disturbing the restaurant patrons seated nearby. She had never needed volume to convey command. “This is not a social call. Bring Claire. The morning shows can wait. I have things to discuss with my granddaughter as well.” They agreed upon a date and time and Angela ended the call, slipping her phone back into her purse. She made eye contact with the waiter and he approached to take her order.

“An earthquake?” Noah Bennet sounded incredulous when he and Angela met in her den several days later. “We don’t have earthquakes on the east coast.”

It was quaint the way he had said “we”, when he’d only been living in this part of the country for a short time. Claire had been dispatched to wait in the upstairs guest bedroom. She had bristled at being left out of the discussion between her father and grandmother and no doubt she was listening at the door, or trying to. The door was heavy, though, and the walls thick. Angela was confident that her conversation with Noah couldn’t be overheard. As for Claire’s protests at being treated like a child, well, Noah might tolerate Claire’s backtalk but Angela was having none of it. If Claire wished to be treated as an adult, she’d best start acting the part. Her leap before looking behavior reminded Angela of Peter’s dive from the roof of a building years ago. No wonder her son and her granddaughter got along so well.

“Of course we don’t have earthquakes here but this will be no ordinary earthquake,” Angela said, standing near the window in her slim skirt and heels, smoothing the yellow silk drapes. “I need you to find the person with the ability to cause it and stop it from happening. You’re positive that Samuel Sullivan is under lock and key?” Having arranged the curtains to her satisfaction, she turned her attention to the man sitting in the brown club chair that used to be her husband’s preferred seat.

“Last I checked, which was yesterday, he was still in police custody. I have someone on the inside making sure he’s being neutralized. We’re working to get him moved to a more — ah, secure facility.” Noah returned Angela’s direct gaze with an implacable stare of his own, unflappable as always when the matter at hand wasn’t his daughter’s welfare.

Angela suggested Noah take an exploratory trip to DC. Their contacts in the finance division of Homeland Security could often predict illicit activity better than the CIA’s spies. Money always left a trail, even when its movements were well-disguised. Deer leave footprints, Arthur had liked to say, as if his occasional hunting trips made him an expert, but that was Arthur, an inveterate know-it-all. He was correct though that when tracking intelligent prey, the very absence of footprints could be the most important clue.

“There’s another matter,” Angela said, before concluding their meeting. “It’s Peter.”

“Of course it is. When it’s not Claire it’s Peter. What’s he gotten up to now?”

“So far, nothing other than his naive belief in Sylar’s sudden about-face. As usual, Peter is completely taken in by it. Sylar is going to be responsible for Peter’s death. I’ve seen it,” Angela finished, her mouth forming a thin, grim line, painted in the scarlet shade of her favorite lipstick.

“That’s a problem then because as you know Sylar is indestructible,” Noah said, looking equally grim despite the mild tone of his voice. “Not that I wouldn’t like to blow his head off to test the theory.”

“Not indestructible, Noah. Nobody is indestructible, not even Sylar. He claims he’s changed — let him prove it. Get him on our side. Then find his Achilles heel and kill him. I cannot lose the only son I have left. Send Claire in on your way out. She needs to disappear. I’ll see to it that she does.”

Angela watched Noah’s tall form retreating. He was a good man to have on her side, loyal to a fault as long as one respected the hierarchy of his fidelities, with Claire occupying the pinnacle. Poor Lyle had never stood a chance against his dazzling sister and even Sandra had been reduced to an also-ran in Noah’s zeal to protect his daughter. Fortunately Angela needn’t worry that her goals would ever conflict with Noah’s. They were practically family, after all.

***

Once Claire was out of the way, Angela’s next move would be to call Peter. She knew better than to issue demands or ultimatums about his friendship with the killer, nor would she speak of her dreams this time. Nathan had once accused her of refusing to change her ways, but that wasn’t true. She had learned her lesson about sharing her visions with her impulsive younger son. But provoking guilt and instilling doubts were tools at every mother's disposal and would also obscure her role in Noah’s mission. Let it seem like Bennet’s own idea to recruit Sylar along with Peter, while she warned her son away from the man. Would Peter buy it? He wasn’t as naive and trusting as he’d once been and it wouldn’t be the first time Angela had tried to use Sylar for her own ends. But that was before Sylar had killed Nathan and she had made the catastrophic error of implanting him with Nathan’s memories. Surely Peter would not expect his mother to want anything to do with Sylar now.

Claire was packed and ready, if not willing, to leave. Angela had sent one of her best operatives to collect her belongings. Hugo would be escorting her to London where Claire would have free rein to explore the city, take classes, make friends, be a tourist, whatever she liked. But Hugo’s people would be watching her every move. She wasn’t going to get away this time. Hugo wasn’t a special but he might as well have been — he was that good at his job. Better even than Noah Bennet, who couldn’t be trusted to handle his daughter with the firmness she needed.

“You’re just like my father,” Claire pouted, squirming out of Angela’s embrace while they waited for the car that would ferry her and Hugo to the airport. “You treat me like a child.” Beneath the skylit foyer where Claire waited with her luggage, her blue-green eyes burned as if she’d inherited her birth mother’s fire.

“Nonsense, Claire, I’m nothing like Noah. For one thing, I don’t coddle you and tell you what you want to hear. For another, I’m not the least bit wounded by your rejection. Hate me as much as you wish. This is for your own good and one day you’ll thank me. In the meantime, try to acquire some culture and finesse while you’re abroad. Goodbye, dear.” Angela touched her cheek to Claire’s, planting an air kiss near her ear. With a turn of her elegant high-heeled feet, she left her granddaughter seething behind her. Claire would get over it. She had no choice.

***

Angela sipped her coffee and gazed over the patio behind the house and out to the garden where Arthur’s prized rose bushes grew alongside the border of the property. The limbs were bare now, and without the majestic flowers that adorned them in the late spring, the shrubs had nothing to recommend them. Rose bushes did only one thing and they did it quite well — the show was spectacular while it lasted. But Angela could never bring herself to admire something that spent ten months of the year as a non-descript collection of thorny sticks, albeit with glossy green leaves in the warmer months.

She had never taken an interest in gardening, but if she were to cultivate plants, they would need to work far harder for their keep than the rose bushes did and she certainly wouldn’t fuss over them the way Arthur had, spraying, feeding and fertilizing them. With Arthur gone, the rose bushes were left to fend for themselves and seemed no worse for the lack of attention. If only her sons had rebounded as easily from Arthur’s over-zealous brand of caretaking. Preoccupied with her thoughts of the past, Angela’s coffee was lukewarm by the time she placed her call to Peter.

Peter answered his phone after only two rings. Angela hadn’t expected him to pick up at all, imagining at least a few days of phone tag before guilt finally prodded him to return her call. This might be easier than she had expected.

“I’m fine. What do you want?” Peter asked in response to her greeting. It was uncharacteristic for Peter to be so brusque, but Angela supposed that she had given him reasons to distrust her. It couldn’t be helped; she had done what was necessary but perhaps now she could set things right.

There was a lengthy pause after Angela told Peter that she would like to see him and she thought she detected the sound of whispering. So he wasn’t alone. “Where are you, dear? Is _he_ there with you?”

“I’m at work, Mom. And no Sylar isn’t here. You can say his name you know. He’s not Lord Voldemort.”

“Very funny. There’s no need to be fresh, young man. Are you going to make me beg for a visit?”

Peter sighed. “No. You don’t have to beg. Let’s try to get past this. I have a couple days off next week. How’s Tuesday? Lunch or dinner?“

They agreed on a six o’clock dinner at Angela’s home. She had even managed to persuade Peter to spend the night, giving them more time together so that she could infiltrate his defenses. Angela wasn’t above pleading when it was called for and she had correctly surmised that Peter would be unable to refuse her such a small request so soon after the loss of Nathan.

Angela replaced the receiver on the house telephone, pleased with how easily she had managed to orchestrate events thus far. She would follow-up with Noah, visit with Peter then fly over to the UK to see how Claire was adjusting. Meanwhile she hoped for the dreams to fill in the missing information to refine her plans. She pondered how to get the media to forget about Claire. Perhaps she could manufacture a story to overtake the headlines and push the speculation about Claire to the bottom of the websites. A good scandal would do it. She retrieved her cell phone from her purse and scrolled through her contacts, ruminating on whom to call next.

***

“You know you're jumping right into the snake pit? Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Sylar arched an eyebrow at Peter from his end of the sofa. It was a milder reaction than Peter had anticipated.

“Come on, bud,” Peter said. “She’s still my mom.” The TV remote was in his hand as he flipped through channels on their new flat screen, though he wasn’t paying much attention to the options that flashed by.

“With a mother like her…” Sylar left the sentence dangling and stared at the TV.

“Yeah look who’s talking.” Peter said, instantly regretting the impulsive remark and wishing his mouth had a rewind button. He and Sylar would sometimes banter about subjects that were otherwise painful to discuss, but that comment might have been taking it too far.

“I killed mine, Peter.” Sylar deadpanned, blank-faced as he glanced at Peter, compounding the EMT’s remorse until the super-powered ex-villain’s mouth widened into a wicked grin.

Peter winced at the black humor. Sylar didn’t mean it. Killing one’s own mother wasn’t something a person got past easily. He would know, having shot his father, Sylar’s assist notwithstanding. His father had deserved it, though, and he wasn’t sure the same was true of Sylar’s mother. Sylar was still mum on the subject of exactly what he’d endured other than the religious mania and harsh punishment of being locked in a dark closet when he’d misbehaved. The thought raised both a shiver at the cruelty and an unwanted memory of Peter’s own isolation aboard the ship to Ireland. At least he’d been an adult and it hadn’t been a punishment; it was an attempt to give him a new start, although a horribly twisted concept of mercy.

Peter was shaken from the memory when Sylar bypassed the remote in his hand and selected a channel via telekinesis. It was showing a rerun of Seinfeld. The apartment, so barren when they’d first emerged from the mind-prison, was now furnished with a couch, a coffee table, the TV, an actual bed instead of a mattress on the floor, a work-table for Sylar’s timepieces and tools, bookshelves and other accoutrements of a home.

They’d filled the apartment quickly, or Sylar had done so, pawning chunks of the gold he fashioned with Bob Bishop’s stolen ability and shopping while Peter was at work. He had risked an incognito visit to his own apartment to gather his tools and what he could reasonably carry from among his favorite timepieces. Peter had frowned at Sylar’s gleeful tale of shape shifting to sneak past the undercover police and company agents that were no doubt watching the place. A little TK to pick the lock on the door leading to the roof to avoid anyone stopping to question why the building superintendent was removing items from the apartment, and Sylar was done.

“You shouldn’t have taken such a risk,” Peter had said, earning a smug retort from Sylar that nobody could touch him. Before they’d escaped Parkman’s prison, Peter would have laid money that Sylar would be reluctant to use the shapeshifting ability that had been so pivotal in his identity crisis, second only to receiving Nathan’s memories. And here Sylar was, so cavalier about it, for the sake of a few clocks and watches. It was baffling to Peter. In the mind prison, they had been on equal footing, both powerless and reduced to relying on their ordinary human talents to contend with one another. Now Peter was watching his enemy-turned-friend grow into a larger outline of himself, one who was far too much like the killer that Peter had struggled to forget.

“Anyway, I don’t like it,” Sylar declared now. “Especially you staying over. You do realize it will be the first full night that… well, you know.”

”Yeah, I do,” Peter said, turning a contrite gaze on Sylar. “This is something I need to do, okay?”

Sylar nodded his wordless assent, becoming riveted by what was happening on the TV, an unconvincing pretense since he’d never shown any previous interest in laundry detergent commercials. There was a lot of meaning in that behavior but Peter let it go, not willing to engage any further. It had been a long day at work and he just wasn’t up for digging into his complicated emotions about his mother.

By unspoken agreement, Sylar had continued to live in Peter’s apartment. He shared Peter’s bed that in the few short weeks they’d been back had only been used for sleep. They lived like two bachelor pals who battled for dominance of the TV, though not the remote because Sylar was his own remote, and just happened to sleep side by side. It was weird and neither of them were talking about it, but what wasn’t odd about their unconventional relationship?

***

Noah Bennet was waiting for Peter in the ambulance bay when he finished his second shift the next day. “Hello, Peter,” he said, when Peter swung himself out of the vehicle. “How have you been?”

Peter’s partner glanced over at him. “‘I’ll finish up for ya. ‘Night, Pete.”

“Oh hey, thanks Hesam. I’ll get it tomorrow. Take it easy.”

“Noah,” Peter said, approaching the older man with an outstretched hand. “How are you? How’s Claire? I haven’t — wait, don’t tell me. My mother got to her, didn’t she? Where is she or is that top secret?”

“Very perceptive of you.” Noah smiled as they shook hands and Peter remembered the first time he had seen that smile, after meeting Noah in the Odessa police headquarters. He had the same thought now that he’d had then as he searched the man’s impassive eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses. _Who is this guy?_

“Nah, I just know my mother.” Peter returned Noah’s grin though his was sincere and Noah’s, well, he wasn’t so sure. “Can you tell me where she is?”

“Claire is in London. You can’t contact her. Neither can I, but I’ll convey your good wishes.”

“Hell I can do that myself. I’m seeing my mom in a few days.”

“Oh?” Noah said and for a fraction of a moment, his face registered surprise but it was so fleeting in the waning daylight of the winter afternoon that Peter might have imagined it. “That’s good. I’m glad. Family is important.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. The conversation sputtered and died there and Peter wasn’t sure how to revive it when Noah asked him if he had time for a burger or a beer. Peter wondered why Noah hadn’t just called him instead of showing up unannounced. How long had he been waiting around?

“I wish I could but I’m working double-shifts and I’ve got to be back here in — “ he consulted his watch, “less than eight hours.”

“Look, Peter, I’ll be straight with you,” Noah said, but his bid for honesty only made him seem less so to Peter. “We need to talk.”

The symphony of waxing and waning sirens as ambulances came and went drowned out Noah’s next words but it was probably more of the same. _Oh we do, huh_. Peter thought. _Let me guess. It’s about Sylar._ He suppressed an eye roll. “I’ll bet. My mother again?”

“No. Talking to you was my idea. I need your help.”

“Uh huh,” Peter said in a tone that meant “bullshit.”

“I mean it.” Noah gestured with upraised hands. “There’s somebody on the loose, a very dangerous special. I don’t mean Sylar. I’m well aware of your — ah, living arrangement. Don’t explain because I don’t want to know ….”

“So now you're spying on me?” Peter realized he was shouting, not that anyone would notice in the roar of the city around them. Still, he lowered his voice. “Out of respect and affection for your daughter, I’m not going to say what I’d like to. What I will say is that I’m done here. I’m not in the business of chasing other specials.”

Peter turned his back on the older man but Bennet was persistent when it came to missions and he reached for Peter’s shoulder while positioning himself as an obstacle. “Wait.” Peter tilted his head and shifted his weight impatiently but he stayed put.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did. This is NOT about Sylar. You’ve said he’s changed. You’re still alive so I’ll give you — I’ll give him — the benefit of the doubt. Name your time and place and I’ll meet you. Listen to what I have to say and then you can decide.”

“I’m not interested,” Peter said flatly. This time Noah let Peter go. Though dulled by the loss of his original ability, Peter’s empathy retained enough sensitivity to detect Noah’s disappointment. He chided himself for caring. Fuck Noah.

Peter decided to forego the subway and walked back to his apartment, tearing up the pavement in rapid strides. Threading his way through slow-moving pedestrian traffic, he hoped to exhaust his anger while he pondered whether to tell Sylar about his encounter with Noah. It would give Sylar another reason to feel paranoid about the man. But Peter didn’t want to keep secrets. At the very least, if they were going to be partners in creating the institute for specials, they needed to be honest with each other. The trust they’d built had been too hard won to risk now.

Surprisingly Sylar disagreed with Peter’s handling of Bennet’s request. Peter paced the apartment while Sylar talked.

“Don’t you want to know what he’s up to? Not that I think for a nanosecond he’ll tell you his real motives but you have a better chance of finding out if you play along.”

Peter shook his head in anger and disgust. “I don't want to play along, Sylar. I’m done with the games, the lies, all the drama. I’m not going to live that way again.”

“Believe me, I understand,” Sylar said. “Would you sit down for a minute? I can’t talk to you when you’re bouncing around like a ping pong ball.” He took Peter’s elbow and guided him to the couch, perching beside him on the sofa’s arm and continuing his lecture. “We have no choice so we’d better get used to people around and dealing with abilities again...especially after little Miss Sunshine’s circus act. Unless you want to get the hell out of Dodge, and I mean way out, where nobody know us, like a remote tropical island — which now that I think about it, sounds nice....”

Sylar’s grin was comforting and Peter briefly smiled back at the unrealistic idea and the dark eyes holding his gaze. It did sound nice but Sylar was right. Even if Peter refused to get involved with Noah’s intrigue, building the institute meant diving right back into the subterfuge. At least they’d be helping people and that was the only way forward that Peter could see but the whole damn subject of missions he’d rather not undertake was depressing. He slumped in his seat and let his head fall forward as he rubbed his eyes. He was too tired for this. The double-shifts were wearing him out. Sylar was always offering regeneration, but he had other abilities that were more useful for Peter to borrow. Lie detection, for example, helped him assess his patients because as any EMT knew, patients rarely told the truth. Anyway, he didn’t like to wall himself off from the daily struggles that ordinary mortals faced. He would take regeneration if it helped him save lives, even his own if necessary.

After a few silent moments, Sylar’s hand landed on Peter’s upper back and rubbed firm circles, relieving some of the pent up tension.

“Peter,” Sylar said softly. “Don’t let the bastards get you down. Remember what I said back there in the lost city? You’re going to do great things. And you don’t have to do it alone anymore.”

Peter angled his head to look at Sylar. “Okay. You’re right. Pity party’s over. I’ll call Noah. By the way, Claire is out of the picture for now. My mother made her disappear for awhile.”

“Hmm,” Sylar said, the corners of his mouth twitching with impish amusement. “Now there’s a showdown in the making I’d like to see.”

***

Angela received a paper edition of _The New York Times_ every morning and she was delighted to see that the scandal about the congressman’s under-aged girlfriend dominated the headlines. She flipped through the paper over breakfast at the kitchen island, leafing through the pages until she found what she’d been seeking. It was a small article about the mysterious disappearance of the Ferris wheel jumper, with a quote from unnamed police sources saying it had been a hoax and witnesses attesting to how convincing it had looked.

Angela typed the reporter’s name in her phone’s notes app. It might be useful at some point. Later she’d search the internet to see how far down the search page the stories had fallen. She had no illusions that Claire’s revelation would stay buried forever but she could buy time to figure out what to do about it.

***

“Mom?” Peter announced his presence from the foyer where he had used his key code to enter his childhood home. His mother had said she was giving the servants the night off and he didn’t want to startle her. The house smelled fantastic, the rich garlicky aroma of his mother’s cooking triggering both hunger and nostalgia for the Sunday afternoon family dinners of his childhood. A sharp pang of grief accompanied the memory. Time had worn the piercing pain of loss to a dull edge so that it was no longer a shock to Peter’s system every time he was confronted with the reality of Nathan’s death. But walking into this house of memories after what felt like five years was jarring.

“Peter! You brought wine. How thoughtful of you,” Angela said as she glided into view, wearing an apron over her blouse and slacks and having traded her customary heels for flat shoes as she always did when she cooked. Peter leaned into his mother’s embrace. He let the backpack he’d been dangling fall to the marble tiled floor as he hugged back, feeling the sharp shoulder blades poking from her back and wondering when she had become so thin.

They were eating in the kitchen since it was just the two of them. The table was set, sauce was simmering on the six-burner stove and a pot of water was beginning to boil beside the saucepan. Angela plucked two wine glasses from the table, set them down on the granite-topped kitchen island and handed the corkscrew to Peter. When he’d poured wine for each of them, Angela clinked their glasses together. Peter noted that she didn’t offer a toast. _Yeah, what was she going to say? To family? To mothers and sons? To dreams coming true?_ Anything she might have toasted was better left unsaid. She smiled brightly and the glass she held aloft shimmered where the light caught the crystal rim, but there was no sparkle in her eyes. Another pang wrenched Peter’s insides; guilt this time for not coming to see her sooner. He managed a smile in return, as false as the one his mother wore.


	3. Chapter 3

Since leaving her class at the university, Claire had been plagued by the creepy feeling that she was being followed. She’d been in London for a week and there was always someone tailing her. Just when she’d start to think she was finally, blissfully, alone, she’d spot them. By now she knew all of Hugo’s people and they didn’t try too hard to hide their presence. This was different. There were two of them and she didn’t recognize these men but she was pretty sure they’d been behind her the entire way. Something about them that she couldn’t identify felt wrong. Perhaps it was that they pretended they weren’t following her. She stopped in front of a shop window to admire a display of colorful dishes, casually glancing to her right. The men coming towards her didn’t look at her or acknowledge her existence in any way.

That did it! Everywhere she went, even across the damn ocean, she was a freak. She might as well act like one. Taking a step away from the store window, Claire faked a stumble and threw herself to the ground. Several people stopped to help her up, asking if she was alright and pointing out that her chin was bleeding. “I’m fine, just clumsy,” she said, pressing her sleeve to the cut to disguise its healing and peering around the people surrounding her to see that the two men had kept going. After thanking the pedestrians who had helped her and brushing herself off, Claire headed in the opposite direction from the two men and found a taxi back to her flat. She decided on the way home that she wasn’t going to mention this to Hugo. She was already a virtual prisoner and if he knew she’d been stalked, he’d probably lock her in a tower like Rapunzel. Her father would love that.

For all she knew, the men could be Hugo’s people that she hadn’t seen before since they were the only followers she’d noticed this afternoon. Outside her front window were the usual neighborhood passersby — men and women with briefcases returning from work, mothers and the occasional young fathers pushing strollers, and clumps of loitering teenagers taking selfies with their tongues sticking out. If not for her ability, she might be just like them, back in sun-baked Odessa instead of this cold and cloudy city. There was no sign of the two suited men who had followed her. She crossed the living room, bootheels echoing on the wooden floor in the high-ceilinged and sparsely furnished room. From Claire’s bedroom window there was nothing to see except the brick walls, pavement, and garage doors of the rear courtyard.

Maybe she was being paranoid, so used to being a target of attention and worse. Anyway, she could handle herself; she’d already had plenty of experience.

***

Over dinner, Peter and Angela chatted about extended family members, including Claire who, Peter agreed, should lay low for awhile. He was certain that Claire hadn’t felt the same way and would be rattling her chains. If there was anyone whose motivations he understood, it was Claire but revealing the existence of abilities was where they parted ways. For once, he was glad of his mother’s domineering methods. He smiled to himself at what Sylar had said days ago about a showdown between his mother and his niece. For the time being, Peter’s money was on his mother but if Claire managed to evade being captured and turned into a blood bank, she would grow into a formidable woman once she matured past her adolescent self-pity. One thing she had on his mother; she was more willing to get her hands dirty. After all, she was indestructible.

The dinner conversation was pleasant but Peter knew what was coming. He decided to preempt his mother.

“I know you’re dying to say something so let’s just get it over with, alright?” They had finished dinner and were enjoying a second glass of wine. Peter leaned back in his chair and tilted his head in curiosity as minute expressions crossed his mother’s face before settling on haughty with a dash of maternal privilege.

“Really, dear, when did you become so arrogant? You never used to speak to me this way.”

 _Oh, around the time you decided it was a good idea to let me blow up New York. Or was it when you sent me to kill my super-powered father armed with only a gun? Or maybe it was when you took advantage of a guy who was searching for another path and you made everything worse? No, I think it was when you let me believe that the guy who_ killed _Nathan_ was _Nathan._ All of these possible responses flitted through Peter’s mind but he didn’t say any of them. He didn’t say anything at all. He’d struggled to forgive his family at Coyote Sands but the lies and betrayals still hurt, especially when his mother pulled her obtuse act. Now he remained quiet, watching her large, dark eyes that were so much like Nathan’s, waiting to see if she would drop the facade. There was no way to ever know for sure how much of their relationship was real but he’d take what he could get.

His mother’s speech was predictable enough that Peter could have scripted it in his sleep. A little flattery, acknowledging that he had always been his own man — and a fine one at that — to cushion the insult about his headstrong and impulsive nature. Check. One good deed by Sylar does not a hero make. Check. How could he be sure he could trust Sylar? Check. Sylar killed Nathan. No kidding. Check. Peter let her speak and made no attempt to contradict any of it until she said that he hardly knew Sylar as anything but a sadistic killer. “He is not your friend, Peter.”

“You’re wrong, Mom. You are. Do you have any idea what it was like? It was _five years_.” For something to do, he stood up and began clearing the table.

“I don’t know what you mean. You persuaded him to go with you to the carnival. He rescued the girl, your friend. What was her name?”

Peter halted on his way to the dishwasher with their dinner plates, one in each hand, and turned back to the table where his mother was still sitting, swirling the wine in her glass. “You mean you don’t know? About the mind-trap? And how I — ?”

“No, dear. I don’t know,” Angela said. The soft indirect lighting that his mother favored for mealtimes erased the newly emerging careworn lines on her face that Peter had noticed earlier. “Why don’t you tell me." She patted her hair into place, one of the many grooming gestures that had always made her appear vain. When she wasn’t fussing with her hair or reapplying lipstick, she was smoothing his collar, straightening his brother’s tie, brushing non-existent lint off his father’s shoulder. Peter knew better now. Appearances were certainly important to his mother but these little tics she was always performing were her way of self-soothing. Peter had put the pieces together after learning about his long-lost aunt and her disastrous emotional outburst many years before at Coyote Sands. His anxiety wasn’t just a personality trait; it was a family trait and it explained a lot about his brother, too, and his fear of abilities. Granted, his mother and Nathan had hid it a lot better than Peter did but fear was the driving factor in so much of what they’d done.

Was his mother telling the truth that she didn’t know about Matt Parkman’s attempt to permanently imprison Sylar in his own mind or was this part of some manipulation? And if she was being honest, how was he going to explain befriending his brother’s killer? Never mind the parts he’d never willingly divulge; she’d find that out on her own soon enough. She always did.

Over a third glass of wine that Peter needed for fortification, he gave his mother the highlights of the time he’d spent trapped alone with Sylar. They stayed in the kitchen because he didn’t want to have this conversation in the den. There was too much of his father in that room. His father would never have listened to his side of things and despite the damaged trust between Peter and his mother that could never be fully restored, he was grateful that she gave him the space to talk. He hadn’t told this story to anyone else. There wasn’t anyone he could tell it to. Angela liked to set the agenda in all of her interactions, but she’d listen, too, though rarely as much as she spoke. It didn’t take Peter long to explain; he wasn’t going for details that his mother might pick apart or read into. The main point was that he’d had five years to get to know a different Sylar, one who had been broken by his three-year ordeal of solitary confinement and was a changed, wholly repentant man who had shown himself eager to rescue people rather than hurt them. When Peter concluded his explanation, his mother said that he’d given her a great deal to think about and suggested they turn in for the night.

Peter was under the covers with the light out when his mother knocked on the door of his childhood bedroom. Never one to let anything lie fallow, she’d taken down the rockstar posters he’d left behind and replaced them with classy abstract prints. Peter had just called Sylar a few moments before. Sylar had asked how it was going and Peter had said that so far it had gone shockingly well. They said good night and Peter stopped short of saying that he missed him. He was thinking of calling back when his mother appeared.

Angela sat on the bed in the darkened room, dimly lit by the hallway sconce just beyond the door. Peter scooted over to give her room and sat with his back leaning against the pillows, fingers absently rubbing the soft velour of his blanket. “I want to thank you, dear, for showing me the trust to tell me that story. I have a better understanding of why you consider him your friend.”

 _If you only knew_ , Peter thought. _Too bad I don’t trust you that much_. She was bound to find out the truth. She’d probably never speak to him again and God knew what she’d do but at least they’d had this night to feel like family once more even if it couldn’t last. Now, his mother was suggesting that the duress of his captivity with Sylar could have clouded his judgement. With careful diplomacy, she pointed out that Peter’s empathy could be detecting a sincere wish on Sylar’s part to change, yet the hunger might be too powerful; Sylar may not be able to help himself. “I’m simply asking you to be aware and alert,” she said.

Peter patted his mother’s arm in an attempt to placate her worries. “I will. I’ll be careful.”

“I cannot lose another son. You understand that, don’t you, dear?” Peter heard an uncharacteristic quiver in his mother’s voice and reached for her hand, linking their fingers together even though he didn’t care for the insinuation that Sylar was a threat to him. It was reminiscent of a similar conversation from years ago, when she’d told him he was her favorite. Funny, she’d been sitting on his bed then, too, and just like that time, he felt his chin tremble with the effort to stifle his emotions.

“‘Course I do. I love you, Mom.” He squeezed her hand in his.

“I love you more than you can know, Peter. May I ask one question?”

“Sure.”

“Have you forgiven him?” She still avoided saying Sylar’s name, Peter noticed. It was a blessed relief that his mother hadn’t turned on the lamp beside his bed because he couldn’t have faced her eyes looking into his when she asked that question.

Peter took the time to consider his response after all the time and turmoil he’d lived through. “I don’t know but I want to. I’m sorry if that hurts you. I love Nathan. I’m going to miss him my whole life. I just don’t want to hold onto hate anymore. It’s been five years for me. I’ve had a lot of time to mourn.”

Angela sighed softly and stroked Peter’s cheek. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t forgive. Goodnight.”

Alone once more after his mother closed the door behind her, Peter looked at his phone and found that it was too late to call Sylar. He pulled the blanket over his shoulder and curled up on his side, facing the wall. He couldn’t help doing as his mother had asked, not because she wanted him to, but it was hard to ignore the truth about how he and Sylar had bonded. There was even a term for it and he remembered reading about the case of a woman who had been returned to her family years after being kidnapped and on the run with terrorists. It was also true that during their lonely imprisonment, Sylar had lacked the hunger, had no abilities nor anyone — other than Peter — that he might have killed. He hadn’t really been tested yet. A sliver of doubt — not the first and probably not the last — found its way into Peter’s heart. If he had Stockholm Syndrome, so be it, but then surely Sylar did, too. It was hard to say who was the jailor and who had been the captive during those years alone together; their roles had been in constant flux.

It wasn’t the same as being kidnapped either; Peter had willingly gone into the mind-prison. They’d lived what had felt like five years of physical and emotional torment only to learn it had been half a day. Did that make it any less real? That’s what Sylar had asked when they escaped and Peter had no answer for that. It had taken time, blood and suffering to accept Sylar’s apologies when they finally came and yet it had been easier to trust him then, when there were no abilities and no other people to sow uncertainty. Sylar had shared secrets with Peter and had given him Nathan’s journals, though, with no strings attached. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

God knew, Peter had trusted the wrong people before. Adam Monroe, for one, he recalled with disgust. Ditto for Caitlin’s brother and his crew. Jeez, what a fucked up life….how many times could one guy have Stockholm Syndrome?

Peter recalled Sylar following him when he had tried to abandon him, searching for a way out of the mind-prison that didn’t involve an unrepentant killer bent on painting himself as the wronged party. _Did he do that for me or because he didn’t want to be alone? Maybe it was both? Is he clinging to me because he has nobody else? I’m clinging to him, too, though, aren’t I? Neither of us really has anyone else we trust. Does he regret his actions only because he messed up his own life? If that’s all it is, it’s not enough._ With those unsettling thoughts sinking deeper into a growing well of doubt, it was a long time before sleep fell upon him.

***

Peter was back at his apartment by seven am after spending the night at his mother’s. He’d called Sylar to tell him he was on his way back, found his mom having coffee with her laptop open on the kitchen table and kissed her goodbye despite her complaints that he wasn’t staying for breakfast. When he entered the apartment, Sylar was also having coffee at the kitchen table with his laptop open.

Before Sylar could utter a greeting, Peter said, “I want you to know I’ve given a lot of thought to what you’ve been asking me. About forgiveness.”

Sylar’s eyes went wide under arched eyebrows. “What brought that on? Surely your mother didn’t persuade you that it would be the Christian thing to do.” He levitated a cup from the kitchen and guided it to the table with a flick of his fingers, poured coffee and added milk and sugar. Peter accepted the proferred cup, took a sip and immediately set it down. Sylar using his abilities for mundane reasons was something Peter was still adjusting to. He borrowed abilities from Sylar for specific purposes but he didn’t use them so casually.

“No, she wanted to know if I’d forgiven you.”

“She really asked you that? What did you say?”’ Sylar gestured again to slide a chair away from the table and motioned for Peter to sit, without ever interrupting his scrutiny of Peter’s face.

“The truth. I want to.” Peter answered, dropping into the chair and pulling the coffee cup towards him. He met Sylar’s eyes as the expression in them transformed from hope to disappointment.

Sylar got up and went around to stand behind Peter, laying his hands on the smaller man’s shoulders and squeezing. “I know you want to. That’s been the status quo for awhile. But you still haven’t and you’re building back that wall.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Peter turned in his chair to glance up at Sylar, noting that he seemed to have grown taller since they’d returned to real life though of course that was his mind playing tricks on him.

“Nothing, never mind. When are you meeting with Bennet?”

It wasn’t nothing but Peter let it drop in favor of discussing Noah Bennet and his latest intrigue.

***

“How many of those intelligence sources you’ve mentioned are my mother?”

The pub was dim and the dark paneled walls added to the murky atmosphere. From their place at the back, far from any windows, it was easy to forget the daylight outside. Noah watched Peter impassively as the younger man across the table eyed him back while sipping from his beer glass.

 _Damn_. Peter wasn’t the dashing young hero Noah had first encountered in Odessa. He was older, more wily and there was more than a trace of cynicism in his narrow-eyed appraisal. He had legitimate cause, Noah acknowledged, priding himself on his unbiased ability to view the past from multiple angles. They had each had their reasons for the things they’d done. Noah wasn’t a man who held grudges; in his line of work, he couldn’t afford to. That didn’t extend to Sylar of course. That bastard would always be public enemy number one but Noah could shelve his feelings about the killer for the sake of his mission. One problem at a time, he reminded himself.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is how we stop it.”

“And you need me because…?” Peter asked.

“You and Sylar.” Noah corrected.

“You said this didn’t involve him.”

 _Interesting_. Noah didn’t miss how Peter’s hackles went up when his “friend” was mentioned.

“It doesn’t. But it could. Things have changed. I don’t have the resources I once had and as you can probably imagine, the news about what happened in Central Park has sent a lot of specials underground. That leaves you and Sylar. With his multiple powers and your ability to have any power he does, it makes you an ideal team.”

“Is that the new company math?” Peter asked. “Two of us and — tell me again, how many of you?”

“I don’t blame you for being suspicious. What would it take to earn your trust?” Noah let his genuine affection for Peter bleed into his expression while he pulled his phone from his pocket and laid it on the table. “Say the word and I’ll call Parkman. You can take his ability and read my mind.”

“No thanks,” Peter said with a scowl. “Been there, done that, not interested in repeating the experience.” Parkman was in California, anyway, but Peter’s flat refusal made that a moot point.

“Then you tell me, Peter. Think it over and let me know. But don’t take too long. We don’t have much time.” Noah slid out of the booth and stood up, tossing two twenty dollar bills on the table and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker.

Peter looked up at him and nodded. “Alright. I’ll talk to Sylar. And just for the record, Noah, no hard feelings. I don’t trust you but I don’t hate you either.”

That sounded so much like the old Peter that Noah was momentarily taken aback, though he didn’t let it show. _Oh that’ll change_ , he thought, with some chagrin at how his plans would likely put the final damper on Peter’s good-hearted earnestness.

“I’ll wait to hear from you,” was all he said.

***

Angela was dreaming again and she saw him at last, the face of the culprit. It was Samuel Sullivan after all but he wasn’t acting alone. He was standing on a hill overlooking the ocean some distance away. Beside him, a man with a heavy foreign accent was asking him to demonstrate his power. Sullivan raised his hands and his face was twisted with concentration as a breeze ruffled his hair and blew the tails of his shirt behind him. In the valley below them, the earth began to tremble and a crack appeared, swallowing dirt and small shrubs as it widened. The foreign man’s eyes gleamed in admiration. “Tell me,” he said, turning to face Sullivan, “what is the limit to this power of yours?”

“That depends on you, friend.” Sullivan smirked. “With my power, I could bury the planet but I need my people, my family, to harness my full potential.”

“Very good,” the man said. “How many of your people and how do we find them? Not to bury the planet of course. Just one city.”

The scene shifted in a swirl of sound, color and motion and Sylar emerged from the blur. He was talking to the same man who had been on the hill with Samuel Sullivan. They were seated on tall stools facing a bar. Colorful transparent bottles lined the glass shelves behind a bartender, dressed in a black vest and bowtie over his white shirt, who was pouring drinks.

Both Sylar and his companion were wearing suits and the foreign man was speaking, but the music was too loud for Angela to hear him. Sylar dipped his head to listen and then laughed. The bartender pushed two shot glasses towards the men, and each of them lifted their glasses towards the other before downing their drinks. The glasses went back down on the bar and the foreign man motioned the bartender for another round. Was he trying to get Sylar drunk? He didn’t seem to know who he was dealing with. The man spoke again and Sylar responded, then held up a hand in a gesture that said “wait” and slipped a small piece of paper from his pocket. He held it between two fingers for the man to see. It was a photograph of Peter, not a recent one. His hair in the picture was short. That had been how many years ago? The man took out his phone and held it as if intending to snap a picture. Sylar yanked the photo away, shaking his head and smiling.

The rest of the dream was a jumble of images and impressions. People were being abducted from their homes, their cars, from sidewalks and parking lots. And then the earth was shaking violently and it was Peter on the hill where Samuel Sullivan had been while a helicopter whirred overhead.

Angela’s eyes snapped open. It didn’t make sense yet but it was beginning to. She emerged from the boutique dressing room and paid for her items, making a mental to do list based on the new information.

***

  
Sylar skirted the imposing brick building, grinning to himself at his latest brilliant plan. It was the perfect place to hide specials, to study and tease apart the hidden threads of their abilities that would lead to the mastery that Sylar had always found so satisfying. Now that he’d completed this first step, he would enlist Emma in what came next. She liked him. She trusted him, which was more than he could say for Peter despite all of Peter’s assurances to the contrary. Emma, unaware of his reputation, would help him, and what’s more, she’d keep the secret from Peter until the time was right for Sylar to let him in on what he’d been doing. The look on the empath’s face would be delicious when he realized how far Sylar had gotten with this plan right under his unsuspecting nose.

It rankled Sylar that he’d hadn’t been more successful in winning Peter’s full trust. It was too bad, really, because they would make quite a formidable team once he persuaded Peter to see it his way. Sylar had made errors — with the damn journals that he had waited too long to hand over, and with the timing of his revelation about what had happened to Elle. What he’d _done_ to Elle, he mentally corrected, owning it. What an idiotic thing to say to Peter about killing his previous lover. _We had a thing. It didn’t work out._ Sylar rolled his eyes at his stupidity. That blunder had nearly cost him everything and it was a miracle Peter had ever let Sylar near him again. The miracle, ironically, was Sylar’s least favorite power. Trust fate for that to be the only ability he’d managed to use behind the wall, to turn into Peter’s precious brother, no less.

Sylar had been too desperate, he could see that now. He was too eager to have Peter in his bed, and that hot body clouded his judgment. Emotions make you sloppy, he always said, and it was true. Granted, five years was a long damn time to wait to get laid and it was hard to think of it as a mistake once it had finally happened. But maybe he hadn’t waited long enough because Peter seemed to be of the mind that what happened behind the wall stayed behind the wall.

It was too good to be true that perfect Peter would consider Sylar a worthy bed-mate out here amidst the judging eyes of his shitty family and near-relations like Noah fucking Bennet. It was fine for everyone else to think they knew what was good for Peter, but where were they when Peter was terrified he’d blow up New York, or when he was beaten to death over and over by Irish thugs, or during any of the countless traumas Peter had confided to Sylar during their five years? Oh right, they had put Peter in the path of disaster. Had any of them been able to give Peter what he needed? Did they even know, or care or try? No. Sylar knew, though. He could do it. Peter was broken far more deeply than the loss of his original ability. His faith in people, in himself, in the rightness of his calling was frayed and it wouldn’t take much to shred the remaining tenuous threads. He could fix Peter if only Peter would let him. He had come so close, too, until the damned wall broke and reality rushed in to ruin everything.

That first night he and Peter were out should have been a celebration. They were finally free and they had succeeded in carrying off the rescue mission at the carnival. Sylar had proved himself in a way that decades behind the damn wall could never have done. So what did Peter do when it was all over? He crawled into bed and fell asleep! And that was pretty much how their nights had been since.

It hurt to lay beside Peter night after night, watching that crooked mouth go slack and his eyelids shutter those hazel eyes with sleep. Close enough to touch but too distant to connect. He was respecting Peter’s boundaries, as Peter had asked him to do when they were still trapped. That wasn’t the only reason Sylar stayed on his side of the bed without crossing the invisible divide between them, though he sometimes forgot himself and reached out for Peter in his sleep and Peter forgot, too, and reached back. Sylar was weary of the game, the hot-cold routine that Peter played as if he were innocent of the effect he had on Sylar. Sylar was tired of chasing, wasn’t going to beg. He didn’t and wouldn’t beg anyone for anything, not even goddamn Peter Petrelli.

Perhaps instead of saving him, Peter had come to torture him. If so, it was the most effective torment ever. Sylar had spilled his secrets, had laid all of his cards down and had given himself over willingly, piece by agonizing piece, to put himself at the mercy of the torturer. It was all for those nights of stolen pleasure and comfort and now he didn’t even have that. Yet if asked, he would be hard-pressed to deny that it had been worth it. If it was a mistake that was now costing him, it hardly mattered. Sylar doubted he’d have the fortitude to avoid doing it over the same way even knowing how it was going to turn out. Damn Peter!

But now? Abilities changed everything. He and Peter had said that so many times behind the wall and so Sylar was revising his strategy. He was playing the long game this time and when he made up his mind to win, Sylar could be every bit as persistent and relentless as Peter beating the brick wall with his sledgehammer. When all the movable parts of this scheme clicked into place, Peter would have no choice but to capitulate to superior planning and abilities. Sylar was no longer powerless to get what he wanted and what he wanted now was more than an incredible, warm, body pressed against him in the night. Oh no, that was no longer enough to satisfy his hunger.


	4. Chapter 4

The police commissioner was taking no chances with Samuel Sullivan’s transport to the high-security facility. Despite the sedation that had been recommended, he dispatched a four-man SWAT team to escort the carnie to a waiting armored car where they would ride along to squelch any possible mayhem.

Sullivan shuffled down the long fluorescent-lit hall of Bellevue’s prison ward, encumbered by the shackles on his legs. His hands were cuffed behind him and two men flanked him, holding each of his arms so that he didn’t fall over. The others followed behind. The armored vehicle was idling in the parking lot, pulled up close to the building’s south exit. The first two men lifted Sullivan into the enormous black vehicle and climbed in, seating themselves on either side of their taciturn prisoner. The remaining SWAT team members sat opposite.

The doors closed and the armored vehicle swung around towards 26th Street and headed west. Thirty minutes later, the urban landscape of New York City gave way to the tree-lined Henry Hudson Parkway as Sullivan’s transport traveled north into Westchester County. Easing off the parkway exit, the driver pulled up to a stoplight. A clicking sound of locks releasing had the four guards instantly alert when the doors were flung open and men in riot gear swarmed from several directions.

The SWAT team were outnumbered by the faster, better-equipped intruders who shot the first three men and the driver, though one of the guards had managed to squeeze off a round of bullets that harmlessly bounced off his targets. The fourth and remaining SWAT member had shoved Sullivan to the vehicle’s floor and was using the butt-end of his rifle to slam an intruder. Two more men stepped into the void, yanked Sullivan’s remaining guard from behind, tossed him to the road and ended all thoughts of resistance with a few well-placed bullets. Within minutes, the attack was over and Samuel Sullivan was hauled from the rig, loaded into the back of a battered old construction van and on his way to an entirely different facility. A dispatcher’s voice blared from the armored unit’s radio but there was no response.

***

Sergei Vasilev was on his way to dinner when his phone rang.

Leaning back against the leather seat of the sedan, he tapped his phone. “You have collected the earth-moving equipment?” he asked in Russian, not bothering with a greeting. After listening for a few moments, he replied. “I hope the price was reasonable. Let me know when it has reached the construction site. It should be kept in neutral until we are ready to begin work.”

The car sped past the National Mall and Vasilev smiled as the Washington Monument appeared framed within the sedan’s window. From this distance, it didn’t look very imposing.

***

Sylar wasn’t home when Peter returned from his double-shift and readied himself for bed. He couldn’t help the trepidation that wanted to seize him whenever he didn’t know Sylar’s whereabouts. After the carnival, Sylar had admitted under duress of Peter’s badgering questions that he had felt a slight gnawing from the hunger at the presence of so many specials, but he’d had a strong incentive to rein it in and other things to distract him. Since then, he had insisted he was fine. No hunger. Peter had no choice but to accept that. Not that he believed it. It was too convenient to be true. Peter had lived with the hunger, not for very long but enough to know how all-consuming it was. It didn’t just evaporate because Sylar had some structure and people in his life. How could Sylar withstand the hunger’s annihilating seduction if he wouldn’t confide that there was any struggle going on so that Peter could help? It was a problem Peter couldn’t resolve at the moment.

Meanwhile, they had been laying their plans for the institute and Sylar was probably out doing the kind of research that Google couldn’t provide. They had agreed that they should investigate how other shadowy organizations operated. The Company was only one model and while there were many things about that corrupt entity they had no intentions of replicating — almost everything, in fact — there were some useful lessons. Mainly the goal was to create a structure that would shroud their clients from nosy reporters, overbearing government officials and the scheming stragglers of what used to be The Company. They would need to operate invisibly while being a beacon for those who needed refuge, and without the lies and recriminations that would alienate the fellow specials they hoped to recruit as partners. “You don’t expect much, do you?” Sylar had said but he was going along with it anyway.

What Peter envisioned was a mash-up of The Company without betrayal and torture, the CIA also without torture and double-agents, the Freemasons without the weird rituals and a boarding school without preppies. “Kind of like a Hogwarts for specials,” was how he’d described it to Sylar who had snickered. “I suppose that makes you Dumbledore.”

“That’s right.” Peter played along, adding, “You’re Snape of course.”

“Are you sure I’m not Voldemort?” Sylar had asked, his eyes gleaming beneath wickedly arched eyebrows.

“Nope. You’re Snape,” Peter replied definitively. “He was a death eater once but he reformed. Some people thought he was still a bad guy, but he turned out to be the bravest and most loyal of all.”

“Smooth, Petrelli. That was good. Subtle, too.” Peter had stumbled a step back from the friendly shove against his shoulder. He was enjoying Sylar’s amusement at the heavy-handed flattery and hoping it would have the intended effect.

It was afternoon when Peter awoke to the sounds of Sylar moving about the apartment. He shuffled sleepily to the bathroom to shower and dress, emerging to find Sylar on the couch fiddling with a watch while Alex Trebek was on the TV reading the Final Jeopardy answer. “Who is Mookie Wilson?” Peter said, taking a seat beside Sylar, who gave him a sidelong glance.

“Showoff,” he said, acknowledging Peter’s superior sports knowledge with a nudge of his elbow to Peter’s mid-section. “Tell me about your meeting with Bennet.”

Peter updated him on Noah’s request to meet with Sylar and they agreed it had the stamp of Angela Petrelli all over it. Peter wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with what Noah and his mother were plotting. Sylar disagreed, saying that he preferred to contend with Mama Petrelli and Bennet out in the open. It was a matter of time before they came after him and he’d rather not be peeking around corners and ducking into doorways every day. “Not that I’m worried about anything they can do to me. It’s just annoying that Bennet refuses to get the message that I’m better than he is.”

“He knows you’re living here.” Peter informed him, to which Sylar chuckled. “I would expect nothing less from Bennet. Does it bother you for your mother to find out….?”

Peter dodged the question, ambling to the kitchen to scrounge for something to eat. With the refrigerator open, he called out suggestions for dinner. “You’re avoiding the question. You’ve been avoiding me,” Sylar said, coming up behind him. “When are you going to talk to me about what’s going on with you?”

“What makes you think anything’s going on?” Peter made his face as innocent as possible, deliberately answering a question with a question. He found a jar of sauce and opened a cabinet in search of spaghetti.

Sylar took the jar of sauce from Peter and aimed his hand at the box of pasta that Peter was reaching for. It smacked into his palm as if yanked by an invisible tether and he laid both items next to the stove, coaxed a pot and colander from under the kitchen counter, filled the pot with water, and set it to boil.

“Just admit that you don’t entirely trust me. I have a feeling your mother was instrumental in planting more doubts in your head. That’s why you came home all guilty-looking and saying you want to forgive me as if that was some new development. You’re ashamed for your family to know you’ve slept with the enemy.” Sylar concluded his speech, leaning against the counter in a deceptively casual stance that failed to hide his hurt.

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Peter insisted, railing at the impossibility of winning an argument with a human lie-detector. “But if you wanna know something that bothers me it’s what you just did...you’re always using your abilities and not letting me do anything for myself.” Shaking his head, Peter left the kitchen and flopped down on the couch.

“I knew it,” Sylar crowed, following him into the living room and looming over the sofa. “My abilities make you uncomfortable because they remind you of who I used to be. We live together, Peter. We sleep together when you’re not filling your schedule with double shifts and creeping into bed in the middle of the night. Then you roll over and give me your back. Don’t you think I’ve gotten the message? I spent five years trying to get into your pants. I’m not going to chase you anymore.”

A twinge of relief for Sylar to be the one to end Peter’s impossible predicament was followed by shame for his disloyalty and alarm that Sylar might be giving up on him. The conflicting emotions battled for prominence, twisting Peter’s mouth into a grimace. “Is that because you have better options now?”

Sylar hands flew out to his sides and his eyes rolled to look at the ceiling. “Do you really think that?”

“I’d almost wish it were the reason,” Peter muttered.

“Wait. What did you just say? You _want_ me to find somebody else? Fine.” Sylar skirted the coffee table to sit sideways on the other end of the couch, leaning into Peter’s space. “I’ll make a dating profile. What should it say? Repentant killer with multiple abilities seeks understanding, _special_ someone?”

“Emma likes you. A lot.” Peter glanced over and then away.

“Oh that’s nice. You’re going to fix me up now, too?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Peter said. “You don’t seem to think you have anything to offer and I’m just pointing out that you do.”

“Where are you going with this?” Sylar bent forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at Peter. “How did we even get on this topic of what other options I might have? Have I given you reason to think I want that?”

The question and Sylar’s bewildered tone of voice tore into Peter. He longed to touch the other man, wishing they could fall into bed the way they had back in the dream world, only a short few weeks ago when he’d finally given up his long resistance. He looked at Sylar’s mouth, full and perfectly shaped, a sweet mouth when it wasn’t smirking or spewing sarcastic insults, and such a contrast to the forbidding dark brows and consuming brown eyes. That mouth on him had been soft, pliant and yielding...God he was sexy and Peter was growing warm remembering Sylar’s teeth dangerously grazing delicate parts of his anatomy. _He wants me. I want him. It would feel so good._ It had already felt good. Better than good. Nobody had ever made Peter feel as desired and protected.

The scrutiny had Sylar’s eyebrow twitching a hopeful invitation, which Peter doused along with his own budding arousal.

“No and that's my point. I don’t _know_ what you want.” That was some bullshit Peter was feeding Sylar. What Sylar wanted was abundantly clear and Peter’s reasons for having resisted before remained, only now the stakes were higher. It was about what Peter wanted, the same as always: answers. Sylar had told him their first night back that he didn’t want to be Peter’s project. Well, Peter didn’t want to be Sylar’s life raft, to save him from his hunger and salve his loneliness. He couldn’t admit that without insulting Sylar and revealing his own embarrassing insecurities. Nor could he say that he felt responsible for Sylar and what he might do without Peter as his anchor, that he was afraid his mother might be right that the hunger was too strong and nothing Peter could do would be enough. He wanted to forgive and put the past behind them, but what if Sylar had lapses? How many times could Peter forgive him? Peter had told his mother that human connection was the key to corralling Sylar’s hunger but was a balm against loneliness a meaningful connection?

Peter was being ridiculous and he knew it, creating an unanswerable paradox. Sylar couldn’t prove a negative. Killing again, or taking up with other partners to show he didn’t need Peter would provide answers but not the ones Peter wanted. Only time would give Peter the certainty he craved and it wasn’t fair to keep Sylar at arm’s length until some distant future when all the questions had ceased to matter. That wasn’t what trust was about.

“My God, you are so blind. Still. This conversation is a fucking landmine and whatever I say will be wrong.” Sylar reached his hand towards the bedroom and his jacket came flying out. Putting his arms into the sleeves, he walked to the door. His voice calmer now, sounding resigned in a way that made Peter wince, Sylar said, “When you’re ready to tell me what your problem is, I’ll be glad to listen. For now, I’m going out. We’re out of Worcestershire sauce. Or something. By the way, the water’s boiling.”

Peter spent the rest of the afternoon alone, too wound up to do more than pick at the food he’d made. Trying to balance the pros and cons of his relationship with Sylar was making his brain ache. He was risking the loss of his remaining family while taking a chance on a person with an unstable power who Peter still wasn’t sure was capable of caring about people outside his small sphere of interest. Without that capacity, what would restrain the demons that had driven him for so long? What did the two of them even have in common beyond abilities and similar trauma? Was unfuckingbelievable chemistry and pathological neediness a solid basis for a relationship? _Hell I don’t know_ , Peter finally decided. _I’m not exactly the poster boy for healthy emotional attachments._ Sylar hadn’t returned by the time Peter needed to get ready for work, so he shovelled his worries to a distant corner of his mind and focused on his responsibilities, changing into his uniform and grabbing his coat. On his way out the door, he stopped, went back inside and found paper and pen. “I’m sorry,” he wrote. “I’m confused and I know that’s confusing to you. If you still want to talk, I’ll try to explain.” He read it back to himself and changed his mind, crumpling and tossing the paper into the wastebasket. He was on a single shift tonight, thank God. The exhaustion he’d been battling probably wasn’t helping.

***

  
It was two sixteen in the morning and Sylar was dreaming about Chinese food. He was just about to bite into an egg roll when a knocking sound disturbed him. Did I forget to tip the delivery boy? The knocking grew more persistent and Sylar’s brain switched over from sleep to wakefulness. “Who the hell knocks on people’s doors at this hour?” he grumbled, sitting up. The predator in him was on full alert now. He padded barefoot to the door and listened, standing to one side in case whoever was there decided to blast through. Sure, he could regenerate but getting shot was painful and messy. He’d ruined far too many shirts that way and being pumped full of bullets tended to slow him down; he preferred to avoid it when he could. He could hear someone breathing and muttering on the other side of the door.

The knocking sounded again and now a woman’s voice hissed in a loud whisper, “Peter, pleassssse! Wake up! I have to pee so bad I’m going to go on the floor.” From the sound of it, she was practically smashed up against the door.

“Peter’s not here,” he said softly, trying to avoid waking the whole building. “Who are you?”

A long pause and then, “This is Peter’s apartment isn’t it? Who are you?”

“It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart. You’re the one out there with the full bladder. I’m going back to bed, with earplugs.”

“No, wait,” she said in the same low, hissing voice. “I’m Peter’s niece.”

Claire??!! That's why something was pinging in his brain at the sound of that voice but she was supposed to be in London. He looked through the view hole, remembering that Claire was really short and angled his face so that he could look down. Now he saw the top of her head. Her hair was brown and spiky.

“You don’t look like Peter’s niece.”

Sylar smirked at the thought of how freaked out she must be, trying to figure out who was on the other side of the door.

“Open the door, Sylar, or I’ll scream my head off and when the police get here you can explain the blood and bruises.”

So much for that mystery, Sylar chuckled to himself. “Feisty as always.” He opened the door and Claire barreled through, sprinting for the bathroom, which made him laugh again. This was almost worth being woken up in the middle of the night. He parked himself on the couch and flipped on the TV. When Claire finished in the bathroom, she planted herself in the center of the room and glared at Sylar, arms folded over her chest, looking like a tiny angry elf with her closely cropped hair. “What are you doing in my uncle’s apartment? Where’s Peter? And oh my God, why are you in your underwear?” When her eyes widened in horror, Sylar noted that her blue-green irises were now brown.

He looked down at his black tank top and boxer shorts. “Are you saying this is a fashion Don’t? Nice disguise by the way. I wouldn’t have recognized you. Peter’s at work.”

“I know you were at the carnival. My dad was going to blow your head off but I distracted him. Makes me wish I hadn’t jumped.” Clearly she had gotten over her fear of Sylar.

“We both know that wouldn’t have worked. That’s not why your little sideshow was a bad idea.”

“Yeah well you should get dressed. I feel like I need to bleach my eyeballs.” Claire flounced into the kitchen and Sylar heard her opening the refrigerator.

“Help yourself,” he called out, heading to the bedroom to put on the jeans he’d left on a chair before climbing into bed.

Claire emerged from the kitchen with a cheese stick and an apple that she rubbed on her pants before biting into it.

“Better?” Sylar asked in regard to his jeans, striking an exaggerated pose as if he were in a fashion shoot.

Claire rolled her eyes and dropped onto the couch. “I see you’re still a sarcastic jerk because cutting people’s heads open isn’t bad enough. You’d look better with a bag over your creepy face.”

The casual insults didn’t rile Sylar but “cutting people’s heads open” was a low blow and he was about to remind Claire that she was a guest on his couch right now. Why couldn’t people accept that he had changed? Nobody ever gave him a chance, they just assumed the worst of him and he … well, he’d certainly lived up to their opinions, hadn’t he? Before he could take another step towards the couch to give her a piece of his mind, he heard Peter’s voice in his head, defending Claire the way he had always done when Sylar made jibes about her. “Can you really not see that Claire is blameless in all of this? She’s a kid! She watched you kill her friend because you had the wrong girl. Can you imagine the guilt? You’ve terrorized and assaulted her and you killed Nathan just as she was getting to know him!” Sylar felt his face grow hot and he was probably turning red, too, as if Peter were standing here chastising him.

Sylar slunk over to the table and folded his body into one of the dining chairs, resting his chin on his linked hands. He owed Claire an apology. Several apologies but he didn’t think it was the right time to discuss all of that, so he stuck to his recent behavior. “You’re right,” he said, without looking over at her. “I apologize for my rudeness. I forget that it isn’t five years later for everyone else. Not that it excuses anything.”

“Five years? What are you even talking about? Never mind, I don’t care.” Sylar heard her mutter “psychopath” on her way to the bathroom. He deserved that. He could hear her crying softly behind the locked bathroom door and there was nothing he could do about it. When the crying wound down, Claire blew her nose and ran the water in the sink. After that, she was silent.

Peter came home shortly before five am and found Sylar at the table, mindlessly surfing the internet. “You’re up early. What’s going on?”

Sylar tilted his head towards the bathroom. “We have company.” He watched Peter’s questioning gaze follow the direction of the gesture and back, but before Peter could ask what he meant, the bathroom door opened, Claire rushed out and flung herself at her uncle.“Peter! Thank God you're home!”

“Claire?! What the hell…” Peter held his sobbing niece, with a quizzical glance over her head that Sylar returned with a “search me” shrug. He snatched his wallet and keys from the kitchen counter and slipped out of the apartment.


	5. Chapter 5

“I have bad news,” Noah Bennet said into the phone when Angela picked up.

“I’ve been expecting your call. I’m aware that Samuel Sullivan has somehow escaped police custody.” Angela said as she laid out her clothes and prepared to shower, having just finished her morning coffee. She wouldn’t be going to London after all, but Sullivan wasn’t the reason. “I have news for you, Noah. Claire has gone missing. There was an attempted abduction. Whoever it was apparently didn’t know about Claire’s healing and spooked when Hugo shot her. Hugo’s been injured but he’ll recover. In the commotion, Claire disappeared.”

“I assume you have people on the ground looking for my daughter.” Angela knew him well enough to detect the worry and anger masked by Noah’s level tone. She was supposed to be protecting Claire but some things could not be helped. Claire had certainly gotten into her share of trouble on Noah’s watch.

“Of course. I care about my granddaughter as much as you do. We’ll find her. If I know Claire, I can guess exactly where she’ll turn up.”

“I’ll call Peter,” Noah suggested.

“I already did. He was at work. I didn’t tell him anything because I know my son. He’ll protect her and I don’t want him to give her a head start.” Hopefully Claire had gotten her desire for notoriety out of her system and wouldn’t be the headlining guest on Good Morning, America.

“Alright. Did your man have any idea who was behind the abduction? Why wouldn't they have known about Claire’s ability? Our people found the armored car and five dead cops. Sullivan didn’t get away on his own.”

Angela relayed the details of her most recent dream. “Mr. Sullivan’s power is amplified by the proximity of other people with abilities. Claire isn’t the only target. Hugo thinks whoever sent the people after Claire deliberately chose to keep information about abilities on a need to know basis, I presume because Claire’s doesn’t pose a threat.

“That was dumb,” Noah said. Angela agreed and said she needed to make calls to ensure that the events concerning Sullivan and Claire were kept out of the news. Before ringing off, she wanted to know how the plan to dispose of Sylar was coming along. Noah pointed out that Angela's dream had been ambiguous about Sylar’s role in what would happen to Peter. “Are you sure you aren’t setting into motion the very thing you’re trying to prevent?” he asked.

“This is the way it works,” Angela said. “Fate creates the scenario and we have to deal with it. I tried to keep Peter away from that deaf girl so that he wouldn’t be anywhere near that carnival and then I attempted to prevent him from going after Sylar. You know how that turned out.”

***

Recovering from his initial shock, Peter comforted his crying niece, leading her to the couch and crouching before her to calm her with soothing touch and reassuring words. He tried to imagine Claire and Sylar alone in his apartment before he arrived and couldn’t picture it. It was too surreal. Had Claire hidden out in the bathroom the entire time? It was difficult to fathom that she had even stayed in the apartment once she came face to face with the former killer. He wasn’t sure his apartment could contain the two of them simultaneously, which was going to make for interesting times ahead.

Once Claire’s tears subsided, she told Peter how Angela had commandeered her onto a plane so that she could hide out in London until the media attention to her exploits had died down. She had been guarded and tailed every minute of the day. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe her roommate was another college student like herself — Claire was a prisoner and the roommate was the warden, most likely a special like herself though Claire hadn’t had enough time to ferret out the woman’s ability.

Hugo, her other gatekeeper, had come to her apartment before dawn to move her. He’d gotten word that there were people rounding up specials and he didn’t want to take chances. It was already too late as two men with guns were waiting in the rear courtyard where Hugo’s car was parked, the very same men whom Claire had noticed days before. They’d grabbed Claire and pointed their guns at Hugo, using Claire as a shield. They told him nobody had to get hurt as long as they got what they’d come for. She mouthed “shoot me” so he did. That had the desired effect of freaking out the would-be kidnappers. As Claire collapsed, they tossed her to the pavement and ran, but not before firing at Hugo. He crumpled just as Claire’s body was expelling the bullet in her chest and beginning to heal over. Claire called an ambulance and while she waited, she inspected the man’s injury. It was high in his chest, near his right shoulder. She removed her jacket, folded it and applied pressure to Hugo’s wound, thinking how crazy her life had been that she even knew to do this for him. When she heard the approaching siren, she took Hugo’s left hand. “Here, hold this down and press hard,” she instructed him, making her escape while the ambulance was pulling into into the courtyard.

The street vendors were just setting up for the day as Claire walked along the rain-drizzled pavement. Not many people were about so early in the day to notice her torn and blood-splotched clothing, which, luckily was black, but it was growing lighter outside and she would draw attention soon. She bought a rain poncho and an umbrella from a vendor and walked until the stores began to open, picking up a pair of scissors and a box of hair color at a pharmacy. In the bathroom of a fast food restaurant where workers had just unlocked the doors and patrons had yet to appear in search of breakfast, Claire gave herself a makeover, chopping off her hair and dying it brown. Next she went shopping for a change of clothes, burying her bloody garments in a trash can on the street. Finally presentable, Claire boarded a train to Paris, where she caught a flight to New York. There was a luxury optical store in the airport where Claire purchased the brown contact lenses while she waited for her flight to board. She had headed straight to Peter’s from JFK.

“Weren’t you worried they would track your passport?” It was unspoken who they were but Peter meant to encompass anyone who might be searching for Claire, including their respective parents.

“I used a different one. I’ve had it for ages,” she said with blithe indifference, sounding like the girl who had once told him that dying was no big deal, she’d done it dozens of times. “It’s not the first time our family has tried to ship me off, you know.”

Peter marveled at Claire’s resourcefulness. “What should I tell my mother?” Angela had called while Claire was describing her escape and Peter had let it go to voicemail. “I have to call her back before she gets suspicious.”

“Say you’re at work.”

“You know they’ll come looking for you here eventually.”

“I know but it will give us some time to figure it out.” Claire reasoned. She’d made it clear she wanted no part of the twin chokeholds represented by her father and Peter’s mother. Their brand of protection was often worse than whatever danger they were trying to forestall. If anyone knew that, it was Peter of the “blow up New York to save the world” scheme. Peter returned the call from his mother and almost as soon as he disconnected from Angela, Noah Bennet was on the line. “It’s your dad,” he said, rolling his eyes at Claire in shared understanding of their manipulative parents. As Angela had done, Noah played dumb, not mentioning Claire and only asking whether Peter and Sylar had come to a decision about helping Noah with his mission. Things were heating up, he said, but didn’t want to discuss it on the phone.

“We’re in. I’m at work right now,” Peter lied, in case Noah and his mother were comparing notes. “Let me get in touch with Sylar and we’ll arrange to meet you.” Claire’s eyes were wide as Peter finished the call with an agreed-upon meeting time and location.

“Peter, _what_ is going on? Why are you and _Sylar_ meeting my _dad?_

“You got a few hours? Because I have a story for you that you may find hard to believe.”

***

Noah made himself breakfast and sat down to eat while going through the details of the mission. Breakfast was often his best meal of the day, the one thing he could cook without ruining it or having to call Sandra for advice. She was out of patience with him these days and had been for longer than he cared to admit. Had it not been for mind-wiping she would have left him long ago.

Forgoing that mental dead-end, Noah read through his notes. His mind was refusing to cooperate, instead circling back to his worries about Claire’s whereabouts. It had made sense at the time to let Angela spirit his daughter out of the country. Claire had no idea of the havoc her televised stunt would cause. The media frenzy was only the beginning and the least of the problems she had caused for herself. His methods of dealing with specials had been far superior to Claire’s naive belief that they could live openly. Had she learned nothing from her birth-father’s misguided operation? Nathan Petrelli had died trying to deal with specials his own way despite Noah’s attempts to impose the tried and true formula: one of us, one of them.

Angela Petrelli was another problem. Noah didn’t need to involve himself in her prophetic catastrophes. She had been wrong before — wrong about the future, wrong about her husband, wrong about how her sons would play their assigned roles. Noah had plenty of money. He could walk away from this mission and let Angela find somebody else to save the world. He wasn’t fool enough to believe he’d been chosen for his superior skill or prior experience with Russians. He was pliable, that was why. It was their shared connection of having worked together for so long and their mutual hatred of Sylar. It also beat learning to cook.

Noah shook his head, because there was more. It always came back to Claire. If the Russians were behind the attempted abduction of his daughter as it appeared they were, then Noah was involved whether he liked it or not. Acquiring specials could be the new arms race and that made killing Sylar more crucial than his own personal blood-feud with the psychopath. Sylar might be playing for the other team, if Angela’s interpretation of her dream was accurate. What the Russians could accomplish with Sylar on their side and vice versa? It was too horrible to imagine.

The killer’s Achilles heel was the most daunting problem of all. If only Claire hadn’t jumped that night, Noah had a clear shot of the man’s skull. Danko had said that Sylar moved his kill spot but how could he survive having his brain blown apart? At the very least Noah would have had his answer. Now it was back to square one: how to neutralize someone whose abilities made it virtually impossible to fool, disable or catch him unaware.

There was one person who might be able to help and that would be Noah’s next call, after breakfast. Then he’d meet with Peter and Sylar and if he had his chance then, he’d take it. As in any game of cat and mouse, he couldn’t plan every detail to place the mouse where he wanted him. He’d just have to wait and watch for his opportunity to be where the mouse was and be ready to pounce. Sylar was no ordinary mouse of course, but Noah had known that from the start. He was ready.

***

With a sigh Peter took his seat beside a wondering Claire. Would they be having this conversation if she had stayed in New York to deal with the results of her revelation? Probably not and maybe things had worked out in his favor. He was getting to tell his side of things before rumors got back to her and let her form an opinion that might be impossible to undo.

“Let me text Sylar. I need to update him and then I’ll explain everything.” Claire stiffened at his casual mention of Sylar’s name, fueling his anxiety about how she would react to what he was going to tell her. After texting Sylar that they had a meeting with Noah that day and asking him to wait a few hours before returning to the apartment, Peter launched into the story of how he had sought Sylar because of his mother’s dream. Only Sylar could help him save Emma and the rest of the people endangered by Samuel Sullivan’s plan.

“Oh Peter.” Claire’s voice was mournful, taking her uncle’s hand when he got to the part about spending a month alone, hiding out from Sylar without seeing or hearing another living soul. Her eyes filled with tears when Peter blinked his own watering eyes narrating the loneliness and grief of mourning Nathan while sparring with his killer. Unlike his mother’s grudging acceptance of his words, Claire was listening with an open heart and Peter strove to avoid breaking down at the sympathetic tears sliding down his niece’s face.

“And I don’t know how, Claire, but things changed. We were tired of fighting. I think we both had ptsd, probably still do, and even though we hated each other, we both related to being tortured by The Company, always on the run, the way abilities seemed like such a gift at first and then wrecked our lives.” Peter struggled to convey the utter silence and emptiness of the false city, the way it had felt like being dead but not at peace, and how the terror of being the next-to-last living being on earth drove him to seek the presence of the one man he hated most in all the world.

“I think I can understand a little bit of that,” Claire said in a quiet voice. “It was lonely for me in London. No family, no friends, no familiar faces or places. I know it’s not the same as there being no people at all but the ones in London were strangers. I was just their job.”

Shame prickled Peter’s conscience for having agreed with his mother only days ago that Claire was better off hiding out in London. He of all people ought to know better, having been set adrift so many times. Safety was an illusion that failed to compensate for the loss of one’s people. Stroking Claire’s hand, he added, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me, too.” Claire snuggled close and rested her head on Peter’s shoulder, prompting him to drape a comforting arm across her slim shoulders while he continued, sharing what he knew of Sylar’s childhood, how Sylar had witnessed his mother’s murder and his suspicions that Sylar had been abused by his adoptive parents. Claire didn’t interrupt until Peter relayed how The Company had set Sylar up to kill, left him free to continue the rampage that had led him to Odessa and then captured and tortured him in a bid to understand his power.

“The Company,” Claire said, tilting her head to look at Peter, her distaste evident in her downturned mouth. “It was my dad, wasn’t it?” Peter met his niece’s eyes with a grim expression of his own. “Yeah, it was.” He was sorry to have to tell Claire that unpleasant truth but it was hardly the first time Claire had been disillusioned by her father’s actions. She’d landed the same sad jackpot he had when it came to family.

He told her how Sylar had apologized for Nathan’s death. “I wouldn’t accept it. I was so angry. I tried to beat the shit out of him but I was so messed up...all he did was block. You wouldn’t have recognized him, Claire. He was distraught. He wanted me to forgive him and I couldn’t.” Peter paused, his rib cage tightening with the uncertainty of how Claire would receive it when he explained his change of heart. “But when he asked me to help him...he wanted to repent and he didn’t know how...I couldn’t refuse. Even after everything he’d done, I could see that he was tormented by it and he’d tried to get help but nobody gave him a chance to change. Nobody would help and I knew how that felt because it happened to me so many times. Then I got sick; I was in a coma and he took care of me.”

“How did you finally escape?” Claire asked.

“This is the weird part,” Peter said, glancing down at his niece and still adjusting to how different she looked.

“No offense,” she said with a wry smile, “but it’s all weird.”

“Yeah I guess it is,” Peter chuckled. “It sounds lame but it was like Sylar needed to be sorry and I needed to acknowledge he’d changed for the wall to finally break. We went straight to the carnival, I fought with Samuel Sullivan, he rescued Emma … and that’s pretty much it.”

“And you really believe that he’s changed?” Disbelief colored Claire’s voice as she wriggled out from under Peter’s arm and pinned a challenging gaze on him. “How can you be sure? I don’t understand how you don’t _hate_ him for what he did to Nathan!”

“I know, Claire. I haven’t forgiven him in so many words. That’s been … a struggle. But I trust him with my life.” That was true. Peter had no fear that Sylar would ever hurt him and he remained resolute in his faith that Sylar wanted to change, just as Peter wished to fully forgive. Whether either of them could, over the long-term, was the dilemma he had been wrestling with from both sides of the brick wall.

“He's already saved my ass a bunch of times and that was before we were trapped together. He kept his promise to rescue Emma. There were specials all around...he could have….” Unable to finish that thought, Peter concluded softly, with finality. “But he didn’t.”

“What if you’re wrong?” It wasn’t much different from what his mother had said, but somehow coming from Claire the concern felt genuine and kind, with no manipulation behind it. His answer was the same one he’d given his mother. Giving Sylar a chance wasn’t just the right thing to do, it was also smart. Shunning him would only be repeating the cycle.

Grasping the young woman’s tiny hands between his own, Peter implored her to understand. “Can you see that?”

“Maybe,” Claire replied, but her scowl said otherwise. “It makes sense when you put it that way but ask me in five years because right now I still hate him.”

“I know you do. I don’t blame you and I appreciate that you listened.” Changing the subject, Peter outlined his ideas about the institute and his desire to offer specials the support and guidance he wished he’d had. Claire would understand that, at least, having faced her own trials with her ability. This was an easier topic, too, less personal and far less fraught than the transformation of his feelings towards his brother’s killer, though there was still an open item on that agenda. It occurred to him then that maybe Claire would want to help with the institute. It would give her the purpose that seemed to elude her, a place among her own kind where she could feel normal and needed.

“Me??” she asked. “How?? I’m just a college student who happens to heal. It’s nothing special.”

“Are you kidding?” Peter’s eyebrows went up, incredulous at Claire’s self-deprecating dismissal of all of the ways she’d proven her strength and resilience. “You’re one of the bravest people I know and unlike the rest of our family, you have a good sense of right and wrong. You’re also smart and resourceful. You'd be a great partner.”

Claire’s body language softened at Peter’s words and she lifted a hand to lay her palm against his cheek. “You're sweet to say all of that. Nobody else sees me the way you do. They just think I’m some fragile little bimbo that they have to protect and keep out of the way. It’s so ridiculous when I can’t be injured or killed.” It was a familiar lament that Peter had heard many times and he understood it because his family had treated him like he was too stupid and naive to know what was good for him.

“I just don’t think I can, with him involved.” Claire said with a firm shake of her head. Peter understood and vowed not to press her. The offer would stand, anytime she might change her mind.

Moving on to a more immediate topic, Claire settled herself back against the couch cushions, pulling her dangling legs up and folding them beneath her body. “You still haven’t told me what’s going on with my dad? Why would he want to meet with Sylar? Does he know all that stuff you told me?”

“Oh that. No, and I doubt he’d believe me.” Peter explained what he knew about Noah’s mission. Claire was surprised that her father would trust Sylar enough to work with him and Peter let her come to her own conclusions about that. At the moment, she was pleading fatigue from being awake for twenty-four hours and asked if she could take a nap.

“Course you can,” Peter said with a fond smile, thinking how much younger Claire looked with her face scrubbed free of makeup and her eyes fighting to stay open. But she was no innocent, he knew that. She was as battle-hardened as he was and she’d proved it again by escaping her kidnappers unscathed. Peter pulled extra bedding from a shelf in his closet and returned to the couch, draping the blanket over Claire and arranging the pillow before taking a seat on the coffee table across from her. Feeling very much on the hot seat now but knowing that he could only hope to win Claire’s trust with full disclosure, Peter reached within himself to summon the courage he would need to speak his next words. Like marshalling one of his former abilities, he found his gumption and took the leap of faith. “There’s one more thing I need you to know....” He trailed off at the awareness spreading across Claire’s features.

“Oh God,” Claire sat up abruptly and her hand flew to cover her opened mouth as her eyebrows drew together in dismay. Peter waited for her to speak, casting his eyes down at his tightly laced fingers. His face was beginning to burn with the certainty that Claire was going to bore a hole through him with her no-longer sleepy eyes. “I was hoping…” she began, then shook her head as if scribbling out those first few words. “I mean, it was the middle of the night — and I wondered why but — He lives here, then, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Um, well yeah but …” Peter said, braving Claire’s face again to convey what he couldn’t bring himself to put into words. “I hope you don’t hate me. It might be over anyway.”

“I could never hate you but ugh, how _could_ you? How can you even _look_ at him and not see Nathan? Your own brother!” Tears were overflowing Claire’s eyes yet again and Peter ached at being the cause. He fell to a kneel at her side, reaching to hug her though it was selfishly his own need for reassurance he sought rather than an impulse to comfort her.

“No.” Claire pushed him away, turning her head. “You can’t just tell me something like that and think one of your hero uncle empath hugs will make it better. It won’t. Oh Peter,” she wailed, “you’re the only person I’ve been able to trust and now this…”

“I know,” he said, with a nervous tic that made his eyelids blink repeatedly of their own volition. “It’s hard to explain,” so he didn’t attempt it any further, instead gently brushing tears from her cheeks, grateful that she allowed it.

Claire searched Peter’s eyes with suspicion awakening in her own. “Did he do something to you — some ability?” She stared for several moments. “Never mind, if he did you wouldn’t know, would you? Ugh. What did you mean that it’s probably over?”

In the wake of Claire’s distress, Peter felt his nerve shrivel and turn tail like a frightened puppy. It had been weaselly of him to insinuate that his affair with Sylar was just a hook-up, leaving him space just big enough to wiggle through. And now he was going to compound his cowardice by taking the out Claire’s question offered.

“Just that it happened … before. Not since.”

Peter was disgusted at his foundering loyalty to Sylar. Claire had accepted everything else better than he could ever have hoped. He would have thought she’d be volcanic at the mere presence of Sylar in his apartment. Maybe softening the impact might give her time to get used to the idea? Anyway, it was true that his and Sylar’s relationship had shifted again and they hadn’t resolved anything since their argument. Maybe they wouldn’t. He rubbed a hand across his eyes, confused all over again about what was right and what was mere selfishishness.

Claire acknowledged the statement with a grudging “huh” and yawned. “Is _he_ coming back here?”

“He’s not going to bother you.” He resisted the urge to touch again, aware of how manipulative it could seem from her perspective, instead infusing his expression and his voice with all of his heartfelt sincerity and deep affection. “I promise.”

“He knows better,” Claire huffed, impatiently rearranging herself on the couch and yanking the blanket up to her armpits. “Last time he did I stuck a pencil in his eye. But he still creeps me out.”

“Get some sleep. We’ll figure something out.” Peter placated Claire although he had no idea how he was going to manage that, or any of the other problems settling on his shoulders like a backpack full of bricks.

***

Sylar walked the streets as the city shifted into high gear under a dark and starless sky. Sunrise was still hours away but only a catastrophe could ever interfere with the relentless pace of a New York City morning. He shouldn’t be surprised that his brief peaceful interlude with Peter after breaking through the wall was now over. Peter’s own doubts were challenge enough to overcome but they’d both known Peter’s people would be inserting themselves into the confusion. First Peter’s mother. Then Bennet. Now Claire, and the cheerleader was the worst of all. Peter had ample reasons to distrust his mother and Bennet. But Claire? She adored Peter and even saintly Peter wasn’t without an ego that responded to stroking. Would Claire be the final wedge to pry Peter from Sylar’s needy, greedy fingers or would he douse the worshipful light in Claire’s eyes when she looked at her uncle? It could go either way.

His phone in the back pocket of his jeans tickled his buttock and he grabbed it hopefully. It wasn’t as if Sylar had loads of friends who’d be texting him and certainly not at this hour. The text warning him away from the apartment for a few hours dashed his hope that he’d be the one Peter would choose. At the moment he didn’t give a damn about meeting Bennet to learn more about his machinations either. One way or another, Bennet would provoke a stand-off. Sylar didn’t have to make it easy for him just for another chance to show that he could be a hero. Peter should trust him without requiring more proof. That was the very definition of trust. He shoved the phone back in his pocket without responding. Screw Peter and Claire too.

Without meaning to, Sylar found himself in Emma’s neighborhood and then he felt the distinct tingle of the ability and admonished himself under his breath. _Can’t even lie to myself._ Emma was the linchpin of his plan. Maybe he’d just wait around for a while until it was a decent enough hour to contact her. She had been delighted when Sylar had told her he was orchestrating a surprise for Peter and would need her help. “I can’t wait to know more,” she had said, “Text me anytime and we’ll meet.” That had been at the hospital, Sylar waiting for Peter to clean up after his shift and not the right place to elaborate. This was anytime, right?

Emma was getting ready for work and she couldn’t stop for coffee but if Sylar was open to walking with her, he could fill her in on the way to the hospital. Her smile was broad when she met him on the sidewalk. If this was how Peter felt when Claire looked at him as if he’d not only hung the moon but inscribed her name on it too, then Sylar was doomed. Emma’s happy, welcoming smile was like waking up to find he had a new ability to win friends and influence people without even trying. What might Peter do to preserve Claire’s worship if it was anything like this?

After that night at the carnival, Peter and Emma’s fractured friendship had been renewed, only now it had grown to encompass Sylar. It wouldn’t be hard to convince her to help him locate specials with her ability and she didn’t even have to know the reason why. All Sylar had to say was that it was for Peter and she was in. Emma liked Peter. She definitely liked Sylar if the way she linked her arm with his while walking uptown was any indication. And she gave Sylar a sly, knowing smile that he didn’t even try to dissuade her from because it worked in his favor. The hard part would be telling Peter what he’d done and convincing him that it wasn’t the hunger driving him. It was for Peter. For all of them, really. And yes, alright, there was hunger involved but it was different this time. It made sense. Everything fit together, like the gears and complications in a broken timepiece falling into their rightful places.

***

Claire awoke sometime later to the low murmur of voices. For awhile she lay quietly, fuzzily listening without being able to make out what they were saying. When she cracked her eyes open, Peter and Sylar were standing near the table outside the kitchen having a hushed but animated conversation. She let her eyelids drift lower to maintain the pretense of sleep in case they glanced over.

Sylar was waving his hand in her direction, no doubt complaining about her surprise visit, while Peter was making calming gestures with his hands raised in front of him. Now Sylar was shaking his head as Peter stepped forward and grasped Sylar’s arms. _Ugh_. How could Peter touch that asshole? She made out the sound of her name and the pleading tone in Peter’s voice. Then Sylar touched Peter’s hair and Claire wanted to puke. If they kissed she was going to have to start rattling around because that was beyond her endurance to tolerate. But they didn’t kiss, thank God. Sylar nodded a few times and disengaged, turning in her direction. Claire shut her eyes and as the man passed by, she heard him say in a low voice, “The things I do for you, Peter.”

When his footsteps retreated to the bedroom, It was Claire’s cue to throw off the blanket and ask Peter when he was going to meet with her father.

“We’re leaving in a few minutes,” he said, walking towards the couch and sitting down as Claire put her shoes on. “You’ll have the place to yourself until we get back and then we’ll probably be heading out on whatever mission he’s cooked up for us. You can stay as long as you want.”

“Oh no, you're not getting rid of me. I’m going with you.”

“Claire,” Peter started to say but she cut him off. She wasn’t going to tolerate him treating her the way everyone else did, especially after his speech about how resourceful she was and his offer for her to join his institute.

Claire stared her uncle down, daring him to refuse her. He stared back for several moments, scratched his head, fiddled with his watch and finally exhaled loudly. “Okay.” He nodded several times and repeated, “Okay. But I thought you didn’t want anyone to know you were here?”

“He'd find out eventually and start doing the Claire-Bear routine like I’m still five years old,” she insisted with an exasperated frown. “For once, things are going to happen on _my_ terms. That goes double for him.” Claire jerked her thumb in the direction Sylar had gone and rose from the couch to brush her teeth before leaving. She flashed a self-satisfied smile at Peter, pleased to have gotten her way and enjoying his utter befuddlement as he shook his head and shrugged.

“I guess we’re not flying,” was all Sylar had to say when informed about Claire accompanying them.

They found Noah sitting on a bench in a tiny park with only one way to enter and exit and a line of tall shrubs surrounding its perimeter. He looked like he always had to Claire, solid and impassive in his tan trench coat and glasses, with his hair swept back from his forehead. The only difference was that since his supposed retirement, he no longer wore suits all the time and wasn’t wearing one now. Claire’s father stood up when Peter and Sylar approached and a curious wrinkle formed between his eyes when he spotted Claire bringing up the rear.

“Claire!” Her dad rushed to embrace her and Claire allowed it, tolerating his admonishments about how worried he and Angela had been and then shrugging him off when his hug and questions about her welfare became suffocating. Before her father could interrogate her any further, Sylar made a snide comment about interrupting the family reunion.

 _Oh things are going to get interesting now._ Neither Sylar nor her father would dare do anything in front of her and Peter, would they? It was going to be quite a show to watch these two predators assert their dominance. With one hand still on Claire’s shoulder, Noah cut his eyes at Sylar who was grinning at him.

“Nice to see you, too, Bennet,” Sylar drawled and then he literally started to circle her father like a panther scoping out its prey, while her father followed with his eyes but didn’t otherwise move his body.

“Sylar,” was all Noah said, with a curt nod of acknowledgement.

Claire glanced at Peter, who winked at the display of male bravado. It was all for show. She had no doubts about what her father might do if he didn’t need Sylar right now, nor what Sylar might do if not for Peter...and she still wasn’t convinced that Peter had as much influence with the killer as he thought he did. Hopefully Peter’s current ability was a good one, in case the other two got out of hand.

“I hear you have some dirty work for me,” Sylar smirked at Noah. “Funny how useful I can be when you need something.”

Claire’s father glanced at her, no doubt intending to try his usual tactic of cutting her out of the conversation. Before he could, and before she could protest, Sylar interjected again.

“Stop worrying about your little girl, Bennet. Claire-Bear is all grown up now with a new look and I suspect a new outlook,” Sylar said, flicking his eyes at Claire and then back to her father. “Let’s get on with it. We don’t have all day.”

“He’s right, Noah,” Peter added. “If Claire can outwit the guys who tried to kidnap her, she can hear anything we have to discuss.”

“And you can all stop mansplaining as if I’m not here,” Claire said, glaring at each of the men in turn.

Her father backed down. Sweeping the empty park with a checking gaze, he launched into his explanation of the mission. Samuel Sullivan had been abducted from police custody by Russians who planned to decimate the nation’s capital with an earthquake. Specials were disappearing, many of them former carnies but there had been others, he noted, with a meaningful look in Claire’s direction. It was unknown how many specials they’d captured thus far.

Noah retrieved an iPad from his briefcase to display a map of the area where he suspected Sullivan and the other specials were being warehoused. He said he was waiting for further intelligence, which he expected within a day or so, to narrow the location more precisely.

“We don’t know the target date,” he said, “but Homeland Security’s finance people have detected unusual patterns of trading that suggest money flowing to offshore institutions and various hedges to capitalize on the tragedy. I’d say we have a week at best.”

Noah outlined his plan for Sylar, Peter and himself to infiltrate the camp, recapture Sullivan and free the captive specials.

“I don’t like it,” Peter said, with a pointed look at Noah, Sylar and, Claire noted with approval, including her in his appraisal. “Too many innocent people around to get caught in the crossfire. And we’d have a permanent powerful enemy in Moscow. They’re not going to give up that easily.”

“How many more will die if they succeed?” Noah asked. “But by all means, if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

“I’m with Peter.” Sylar’s eyes were fixed on her uncle and nobody else. Claire shivered at the intensity of his gaze but Peter didn’t seem freaked out by it. A small, almost secret smile flashed on his face as he looked back at Sylar.

“We do have a better idea, don’t we, Peter?” Sylar said.

Peter nodded. “Yeah, we do.”

Claire was confused. What was their idea and was she the only one who was out of the loop? How had they managed to decide on a plan without talking about it out loud?

“Wait, are you using telepathy?” Claire’s father asked. “That’s —“

“No,” Peter chuckled. “I had Matt’s power for awhile but I don’t now. I just know how Sylar thinks.”

“It’s called communication,” said Sylar. “And trust. You should try it sometime, Bennet.” Sylar caught Claire staring at him and did that smug “what can I say” eyebrow tweak-shoulder shrug combination that made her want to take a razor to those hairy caterpillars on his face. The way he looked at Peter was barf-worthy but this wasn’t the time or place for her hatred of Sylar. Peter was already explaining their idea to approach the Russians and suggest a trade: Peter for Samuel Sullivan. After all, Peter could do anything Sullivan could do and Sullivan was unstable. Peter was just an ordinary special who’d been hunted by the government and had good reason to want the capital in disarray and the government’s focus off himself.

“Sylar can broker the deal,” Peter said. “And, Noah…”

“What exactly do we need you for?” Sylar’s mouth seemed stuck in perpetual smirk mode whenever he addressed Claire’s father. “Anybody can handle a gun. Hell, Claire will be more useful, since she can regenerate. You’re not special.”

“Nice try,” Noah said. “Do you think you can just waltz up to these people and offer a deal? I’ve worked with Russians before. I was trained by one. I speak the language and have the contacts to get us a meeting. Let’s leave Claire out of this.”

“Dad!” He was doing it again, babying her, but Claire reiterated that her regeneration would be useful in helping to free the captive specials as well as reviving her father or Peter if either of them were injured. She looked at Sylar. “I know Peter can get regeneration from — “ she tripped over the next words, trying to stifle her disgust “— touching you but my father can’t. And Peter can’t take an ability from you if he’s unconscious. Your regeneration is only a copy of mine, so your blood can’t heal anyone. I’m going. Don’t try to stop me.”

The three men turned their heads as Claire spoke. Noah was exasperated, Peter was scratching his neck and stealing glances at Claire, then at Noah, then looking at the ground and trying not to smile. Sylar wore his usual sardonic grin as he commented that Claire had a point.

Her father was fuming by this time, though only Claire knew him well enough to recognize the signs of anger he so expertly camouflaged from Sylar and Peter. Nevertheless he had no choice but to capitulate to Claire’s demand as they made their arrangements to travel in two days. They’d need to outfit themselves and narrow down the location. Sylar and Peter would fly and Claire would drive down to Virginia with her father. “And don’t even think of trying to ditch me,” Claire warned.

As they wrapped up their meeting, Claire turned to follow Peter and Sylar out of the park.

“Claire? Aren’t you coming with me?” Noah asked.

“No,” she threw over her shoulder. “You can pick me up in two days.”

Her father caught up to her with his longer stride. “You trust him enough to stay in that apartment with them?”

“I trust Peter,” she said, tossing her head though she no longer had the need to swing her hair aside. “Anyway, I can keep an eye on things because you're right...I don’t trust Sylar, but it’s not me I’m worried about. He’s already gotten what he wanted from me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene between Peter and Claire in this chapter was inspired by FieryEclipse's Tongues of Fire. If you haven't read Tongues of Fire, it's an amazing adventure story! Link below:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/7595302/chapters/17284150


	6. Chapter 6

During the cab ride back to the apartment, Sylar murmured something to Peter that Claire couldn’t hear, then asked the cab driver to pull over and let him out. “I’ll get food, too, while I’m out,” he said, shut the door behind himself and sauntered away with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The cab drove past him and Claire spotted Sylar looking back as they sped by but Peter had already turned to Claire.

“What’s that about? Where’s he going?” she asked her uncle.

Now Peter looked out the window but the cab had already left Sylar in its wake. “He’s just killing time so you and I can catch up.”

“I hope that’s all he’s killing,” Claire muttered though she grudgingly admitted to herself that it was uncharacteristically considerate of Sylar to make himself scarce. Too bad it wasn’t permanent.

Claire took the time to shower while Sylar was out. Grooming was easy since she had so little hair to mess with, just a few inches in length all around that she finger-combed into place. She’d come equipped with no toiletries of her own except a toothbrush and lip balm and only the clothes she’d been wearing since she left London. She opened the medicine cabinet to borrow deodorant, wrinkling her nose at the guy-scented options available. Oh well. She chose one of the deodorant sticks and applied it. Her scent was the least of her problems right now. She’d noticed all of the duplicate toiletries during her extended stay in the bathroom early that morning. Two razors, two kinds of hair product and so forth. They were among several clues she had spotted then and tried to explain away, most notably the sleep-tousled killer in his skivvies. Now it was the two toothbrushes in a glass on the counter that gave her a pang. Ugh, she thought for at least the twentieth time since she’d arrived. The damn toothbrushes were mocking her, the way they were leaning against one another in some repulsive metaphor for the relationship between her uncle and Sylar. How _could_ they?

“Look uh, Claire,” Peter began when she exited the bathroom and joined him on the couch. He was just sitting there, not reading or watching TV, and he’d turned to watch her walk over as soon as she opened the bathroom door. This sounded like the beginning of an Important Talk that she’d rather not have but she kept her mouth shut because, after all, she was in Peter’s (and Sylar’s … ugh!) apartment. They didn’t have to put her up and as much as she’d rather be almost anywhere than in the same universe as Sylar, let alone in such close quarters, that didn’t extend to her father’s apartment nor her cell - er, bedroom at her grandmother’s. Going back to her own place was out of the question, too, because then she’d have to deal with her roommate’s speculation and possibly clue the whole damn world to her return to New York. Not to mention that her grandmother would probably send someone to whisk her away again. No, this was the safest option, ironic as that seemed. So she plastered an innocent, attentive expression on her face and listened to what Peter had to say.

“I know this isn’t easy for you. And we’ll have to figure something out soon but I appreciate …” Peter had been looking at the floor as he spoke but now he raised his eyes to Claire’s and she knew this had to be how he’d always gotten over on Nathan. Peter was at least a decade older than Claire but his face was so sweet, his voice so gentle that it was almost like speaking with her little brother, or _a_ little brother, because Lyle had never been sweet. Despite his betrayal with Sylar, Peter was still and always Claire’s hero. For all of his impulsivity, well-meaning mistakes and the stupid naivete that led him to sleep with the man who’d killed his own brother, Claire couldn’t help but believe in him.

It was easy to be swayed by Peter’s idealism because Claire had ideals of her own. She and Peter were cut from cloth that apparently was only tailored for them, not the other members of their family. She had tried to help Elle after Elle had been a vicious bitch, even going so far as to hold Elle’s hand on the plane when they’d traveled to Pinehearst and Elle’s electricity had gone haywire from anxiety. She’d also helped Doyle secure a new identity. The notion of returning cruelty with kindness was, therefore, not foreign to her, but this? Claire couldn’t find that deep a well of forgiveness in herself. She couldn’t forgive Sylar but she couldn’t blame him if he too had been suckered by that baby face of Peter’s and those kind, caring eyes. What Peter saw in Sylar was more questionable. Unfathomable. She would have to set her anger and hurt aside for now. Peter wasn’t off the hook by any means and Sylar would never be, but what options did she have? There was nothing for her out there beyond the walls of this apartment, only the loyal companionship of her darling idiot of an uncle.

“It’s fine, Peter. I get it. You can’t just kick him out. You trust him. I can’t. But I’ll make nice as long as he doesn’t provoke me. Okay?”

“He won’t. He promised.” There was that innocent faith again but Sylar had been on good behavior with her since his apology hours before, which in itself was a small miracle that persuaded Claire not to press her advantage.

“Good,” she said and then, unable to resist a slight poke, she added, “Just in case, where are the sharpened pencils?”

It was late in the afternoon and the descending winter sun sent the last of its warm orange light through the apartment windows. Claire had missed the sun in dreary London. Everything looked better in this golden light, even Sylar when he stepped through the door with lunch for the trio. He’d brought Thai food, enough to feed a platoon of Sumo wrestlers, from the looks of it. Peter cleared off the table where he had been instructing Claire on how to draw and collect her blood, transfer it to a syringe, and inject her blood into himself. Unfortunately, Claire’s blood wasn’t a prophylactic, so injecting it now would not help if Peter or her father were fatally injured during the upcoming mission. Still, they’d needed to practice to make sure Claire could manipulate the needle and find a vein in her arm, always trickier to do on oneself than on a patient; it would be even more difficult under duress. They’d practiced repeatedly, enough to puncture and bruise their arms many times over, but already the most recent marks were fading as Claire’s healing worked its magic.

Luckily, she’d seen enough carnage — hell, she’d been the carnage as recently as two days ago —- that a little blood draw didn’t faze her at all and she wasn’t the least bit squeamish about sticking the needle into Peter or depressing the plunger on the syringe. “You’re full of surprises,” Peter had said, with an admiring look that made Claire feel almost as proud as being allowed to participate in this mission did. Not that she hadn’t ever done anything dangerous, but this time she was being invited — well, accepted at least, she acknowledged to herself, recalling how she’d had to assert her role’s importance. That her participation would be valuable, she already knew, but it mattered that Peter valued her input, too. She doubted her father did.

Peter stripped off his gloves and washed his hands, directing Claire to do likewise, then sprayed the table with a disinfecting cleaner and wiped it down before letting Sylar put the food out.

Claire tried not to stare at how much food Sylar packed into his lanky frame. It must be the regeneration since she too had developed a larger than typical appetite for someone her size when the full power of her already latent healing ability had manifested. Her parents had attributed it to puberty but she’d come to realize over the years that she was always most ravenous after healing from major damage. Still, Sylar could eat. Peter had a normal guy-sized appetite and Sylar easily scarfed down three times as much food as he or Claire did. Then again, he was at least a foot taller and probably eighty pounds heavier than herself. Peter was no skinny thing — he’d filled out a bit since the first time Claire had met him at Odessa — but Sylar had a good five inches and maybe twenty pounds on Peter, in addition to regeneration.

A vibrating sound coming from the kitchen diverted Claire's attention. She stared as a phone came floating across the table and smacked into Sylar’s left hand, as if drawn by a magnet. It was the first time she’d seen Sylar use his ability so casually, not to kill, maim, threaten or show-off.

“Uh, sorry,” Sylar said when Claire shuddered. He looked at his phone and excused himself from the table, typing clumsily with his thumbs as if he’d never texted before while wandering the small living room in aimless circles. He shrugged when he saw Claire watching him. “Big thumbs,” he said. “This isn’t my, uh, preferred method.” _I’ll bet,_ Claire thought and with that, she pushed her food away, repulsed by the memory of how those thumbs had violated her. Peter noticed her distress and stroked her arm.

“Rebel,” Sylar said to an unvoiced question Claire hadn’t known Peter was asking when Sylar returned to the table. He shoveled another forkload of pad thai into his mouth, oblivious to Claire’s disgust, and Claire wanted to leave the table but curiosity won out and she stayed put. Peter’s eyebrows had gone up at the mention of Rebel and Sylar gave another one-named reply when he’d finished chewing his food. “Emma.”

“Really?” Peter asked, in a third single-word volley that sent a corner of Sylar’s mouth upward in a twitch that matched his ever-mobile left eyebrow. “Music is mathematical, Peter. It can be technical as well as artistic. You know that.”

“So like ‘doo doo doo doo?’” Peter sing-songed an unfamiliar tune and Sylar answered with a grin, “Something like that,” much to Claire’s complete bewilderment at this shorthand way of speaking that struck her as some kind of coded language.

“What are you two talking about?” Addressing Sylar for the first time since their uncomfortable meeting early that morning, she asked, “You know Rebel?”

Sylar opened his mouth to speak and then another look passed between him and Peter and Peter explained.

“Sylar met Rebel awhile ago, Claire. Believe it or not, Rebel’s just a kid. A genius kid. His ability is understanding and being able to communicate with machines. Sylar helped Rebel escape government agents during the whole Building 26 debacle.”

Claire’s quizzical gaze bounced between the two men. _Him_? _He_ helped someone instead of killing them?

“I know it’s hard for you to believe but I’ve helped a lot of people,” Sylar said quietly, meeting Claire’s scrutiny briefly before returning his gaze to the comfort zone of Peter’s face. The way those two looked at each other...they really did know each other far better than Claire would have ever imagined, even after hearing Peter’s story about their five year ordeal. It wasn’t that she had thought Peter was making it up. It was too bizarre to fabricate and why would he? It was just impossible for her to picture, as if she’d slept through the best parts of a who-done-it movie and couldn’t make sense of it from other people’s summaries.

Now, watching how they communicated, how in sync they were with one another’s thoughts — even her father had suspected they were reading one another’s minds and, in a way, they were. What had been the most difficult to accept was not the crazy story about a telepathically created mental prison, nor Peter’s ability to survive the leap into the mind of a killer, nor an empty city without even a single living insect or bacteria, where food never ran out or went bad. No, that was the easy part. After all, Claire had committed suicide in dozens of creative ways and even after once finding herself sliced from stem to stern on an autopsy table, she’d simply zipped herself up and moved on. It was the idea of befriending a person who had gutted her more viscerally than the merely physical that confounded her and Sylar had done the same and worse to Peter.

Yet Peter claimed that Sylar had changed and here was the evidence piling up in front of her. Claire shook her head in confusion as the man across the table failed to align with the mental image she had of him. Peter’s obvious regard for Sylar didn’t match the hatred he should feel, the hatred she felt.

“Who’s Emma?” was what finally came out of her mouth and Peter explained that Emma was their friend, his and Sylar’s, and her ability was to play music, despite being deaf and not having any training or knowledge of musical notation, that attracted specials, even when they couldn’t hear it.

Okay, now they were shitting her. _Sylar_ had friends?

Peter chuckled, wrongly interpreting Claire’s incredulous eye-blinking as being about Emma’s power. “Yeah, the carnival was using Emma to lure specials for Samuel Sullivan’s plot to create a massive sinkhole in Central Park. I know, it sounds nuts but when has anything been normal since we’ve learned about abilities? Anyway, Sylar rescued Emma and …wait,” he said, now speaking to Sylar, “where was I when you talked to Emma about Rebel?”

“Oh uh, I don’t remember exactly when I asked her. “ Sylar said. “I figured he could help us with the institute.”

Claire’s head was spinning with all of this new information but thanks to a little known effect of her regeneration, she was able to brush away the mental cobwebs faster than the average person, or even the average special.

“Not just the institute,” she offered. “He can help us with my dad’s mission.”

“Good point,” Peter said, “now that we’ve made contact.”

Sylar didn’t comment on Claire’s brilliance, not that she would have expected him to, but she felt a little smug to have voiced the idea before he had. While Sylar finished eating, they fine-tuned their plans for the next few days. After dinner, Claire asked to borrow sweatpants and a t-shirt from Peter and went to the bathroom to change. Upon hearing Sylar say her father’s name, she pressed her ear to the door.

Peter answered, something indistinct that sounded placating, and Sylar made a reply that Claire only caught the tail end of: “...about her?

She cracked the door open as quietly as she could to listen better as Peter responded and though she missed several of the words, she got the gist. He was saying he trusted her.  _That’s right, Peter. You’d better trust me if you’re going to trust him._

***

The ride to Virginia was long and Noah hoped to make some headway with Claire who was giving him monosyllabic responses to his conversational overtures.

“You’re still angry with me about London, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I am _angry_ ,” Claire answered him through a jaw so tightly clenched it was a wonder her teeth didn’t shatter, “that after everything we’ve been through you still _lie_ to me and try to protect me like I’m a fragile doll that you want to keep on a shelf with all of those stuffed bears. And don’t say it’s because you love me because it’s _not_ about me. It’s about _you_!”

Noah acknowledged he was having difficulty adjusting to her maturity and vowed to try harder, only to put his foot in it several more times by asking if she had changed her hair to look less doll-like and insisting she could as easily have been targeted by kidnappers in New York as in the UK. The conversation ended with Claire’s declaration that the father-daughter chat was over. For the rest of the way to Virginia and until whenever they got back, they would speak as partners on a mission. Her hair, which she informed him she had cut and dyed in a dingy public restroom because she’d nearly been kidnapped, was none of his business. With that, she jammed the earbuds of her headphones into her ears and tuned him out.

The traffic slowed when they reached the New Jersey turnpike just as the morning rush hour was beginning. Noah had wanted to leave earlier but Claire had insisted that she wasn’t getting up at four a.m. when she’d barely slept for days. It was just another bid for control and it was almost funny how much like himself she could be when they didn’t share any DNA.

Her temperament, though, was pure Petrelli, or maybe it was Shaw, from Angela’s side of the family, as Noah recalled the dust storm Angela’s sister had kicked up at Coyote Sands in a fit of pique. Angela tended to get quieter and more measured as her ire rose, whereas Claire and Peter erupted. Arthur hadn’t been like that; he was the steely, commanding type and Nathan had been a hybrid of his parents.

Catching Claire’s eye as the car inched forward and stalled again, Noah asked how it had been staying over at Peter’s. She pulled one earbud free and Noah had to repeat the question.

“It was fine. Why? What does this have to do with the mission?”

“Well,” Noah said, enunciating slowly, “they’re our partners and I just wondered what their frame of mind was.” He spotted his daughter’s concluding eye roll when he momentarily took his gaze off the road.

“You are so obvious. You want to know if they slept in the same bed. Actually we had a threesome. It was great.”

Noah didn’t know what to say to that nor the snotty fake smile that punctuated Claire’s remark. _Maybe I should just stop talking._

“Look, they hooked up in some bizarre shared dream they had. Peter said it was probably over but whatever, they’re obviously friends.” Claire finally responded in a more normal tone of voice, “Their frame of mind was fine, ready for action.”

“Do you think there might be mind-control involved?” Noah tapped the brakes as the car in front of him bucked forward and stopped, giving him a second to look over at Claire who appeared to be concentrating on his question. She shook her head, a doubtful frown wrinkling her brow.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Sylar could just be a really good actor but he’s definitely different. One minute he seems like himself, other times he’s a big goofy nerd who eats a lot and acts like he’s afraid he might upset me or something. Anyway Sylar went out after we left you. He came back with food and a blow-up mattress that he slept on. Peter slept on the couch. They let me have the bed. Weird, huh?”

“Very,” Noah agreed. “Don’t fall for it. Sylar is an extremely dangerous individual as you well know.”

“Whatever, Dad. I’m not an idiot.” Claire sighed and they went back to strained silence.

They were approaching the Virginia border, having stopped halfway for a bathroom break and lunch and passing the remainder of the journey without speaking. Claire rode with her earbuds in place, tapping her fingers on her thigh in time to the music that Noah was grateful he could not hear. He focused on driving. Nearing the conclusion of the drive, Claire removed the earbud and spoke. “Do you have a plan, Dad?” She didn’t elaborate on her meaning but the subtext was clear.

“I always have a plan, Claire.”

“So if we’re partners aren’t you supposed to let me in on it?” In his peripheral vision, Noah detected Claire shifting around in her seat and leaning forward to catch his eye while he kept his on the road.

Sparing a brief glance at his daughter, Noah answered. “When the time is right, I will.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Noah began, with exaggerated patience, “that when you’re dealing with a special who has a lie-detecting ability, it's best to keep information sharing to a minimum until the time comes to act on it. You can’t be compromised by anything you don’t know.”

“Uh huh. As long as you’re telling me the truth and this isn’t more of your protective father routine.” Noah felt the weight of Claire’s gaze on his profile but this time he didn’t attempt eye contact.

“I am telling you the truth,” he said.

***

Sylar wasn’t happy with the terms of the trade but he didn’t have a choice. The Russians wouldn’t hand over Sullivan until they had Peter. They were turning Sullivan over to Bennet in a separate location after making the power transfer between the two specials. Sylar itched to blast them, blow out the building where they were warehousing all the specials and end the mission his way, or how he used to operate when avoiding collateral damage wasn’t his priority. Now there were too many variables that made that a dangerous proposition. Not for him but for everyone else.

He didn’t like the way the two men were scrutinizing Peter with undisguised curiosity when Sylar delivered him to the agreed upon location in a wooded area several miles off the highway. “He doesn't need to be drugged,” Sylar said. “He’s not going to give you any trouble.”

The Russians exchanged snide grins. “That will be left to our discretion,” said the taller of the two men as he cuffed Peter’s hands behind his back and then took entirely too much enjoyment from feeling him up for hidden weapons. “We are both getting what we came for, no?” The other man chuckled darkly and it took all of Sylar’s patience not to electrocute both of them to death on the spot. It was only Peter’s stoic eyes on his that kept him focused on the mission.

“That seemed to go well,” Bennet remarked when Sylar met up with him and Claire later in his motel room. “Why are you so nervous?”

“I’m not nervous.” Sylar reached his hand up his shirt and ripped away the electronic device that was taped to his side, yanking at the wire and wincing as it took some of his body hair with it. “Here,” he said, handing the device to Bennet. “I told you I didn’t need it.”

Bennet must have had more faith in the CIA agents than Sylar did because he kept his own device in place. Rebel could do more damage remotely if anything had gone wrong in the exchange and Claire had kept him apprised of their progress throughout the trade-off of prisoners.

“Well, I’m nervous!” Claire said. “I hate that we gave Peter to those people. What if it’s a trick?”

“One problem at a time, Claire. As long as they need Peter for their plan they have no reason to hurt him.” Bennet soothed his daughter using that mild dad voice that grated on Sylar’s nerves. Sylar didn’t bother pointing out the facts they all knew, that Peter was almost certainly drugged and that there were ways of hurting people while leaving them intact enough to be used. He agreed with Claire, hating this whole mission now that it was underway, even though he had persuaded Peter to cooperate with Bennet. He wasn’t sure he cared all that much about Washington, DC anyway. Not compared with what might be happening to Peter right now, or what would happen if their plan failed. For now, his suspicions about Bennet’s designs on himself could wait.

Claire didn’t seem any more mollified than Sylar was by her father’s words as she bristled at his attempt to rub her back and jumped up from the chair where she had been sitting. “What about _after_? That’s what I’m worried about! Are you sure this is going to work?” Bennet followed her with his gaze but kept quiet, leaving Sylar to respond.

“If they try anything, I’ll rip their spines out.” He glanced at Claire and then away, his gaze sweeping the small room to seek comfort in whatever traces of Peter had been left behind.

No doubt his muttered response confirmed Claire’s suspicions that yes, he was still the same murderous psychopath she believed him to be. Why try to be anyone else than who people already thought he was? He’d promised Peter he would never kill anyone again unless absolutely necessary in defense of himself or others. He swore he had changed. He wasn’t that guy anymore. But here he was being put to the test and already he was doubtful he could keep his word.

“You’d better.” The hardness in Claire’s voice carried across the small room though she hadn’t spoken loudly. “It was your idea to trade him for that dirtbag,” she hissed.

Sylar turned to appraise her. Such a small young woman, growing more fierce by the moment. He liked her better this way, angry and determined instead of bemoaning her fate like a poor little daddy’s girl. The severe spiky brown hairdo suited this tougher aspect of her persona, just as the long blonde curls had always underscored her girlish angst. He didn’t respond, just nodded several times while his eyes darted between Claire and Bennet’s stares. There was no point in defending himself with the assertion that the trade had been as much Peter’s idea as his own. Just because the words weren’t spoken aloud didn’t mean that he and Peter hadn’t been on exactly the same wavelength. But Claire was right. Peter was always going to be reckless with his own life. He, Sylar, should have known better.

Bennet’s sardonic chuckle cut through the silence. “For someone who isn’t nervous, you’re going to burn this place down with the sparks shooting out of your fingers.”

Sylar’s upper lip thinned and his back teeth met in a clench of his jaw that he had to force himself to relax so he could get the words out, choosing to overlook Bennet’s remark. “Let’s get to the interrogation. We’re wasting time.”

***

Sullivan was groggy for a good ten minutes after Bennet removed the tube from his nose and unhooked it from the canister taped to Sullivan’s back. His posture straightened as he regained alertness and glanced around the motel room at the group assembled — Bennet, standing over him still holding the tube, Sylar, leaning against the wall on the other side of the room with his arms folded and Claire, sitting on the corner of the bed with her palms resting on the flower patterned bedspread.

“Claire,” he said, smiling as if they were good friends. “I hardly recognize you. You’re as lovely as ever but I prefer you as a blonde.” Sullivan eyed Bennet and then Sylar. “Don’t do you men agree?”

Sylar noted Claire’s lack of verbal response, but her eyes said it all. Sticks and stones couldn’t hurt her, but she should take a cue from her father about shielding herself from words. Bennet hadn't reacted at all to Sullivan’s all-purpose barb and Sylar wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, either.

Sullivan was clever, Sylar would give him that. He was a perceptive and skilled manipulator, but the fun was about to end. Snorting, Sylar crossed the small room and grabbed the only other chair, straddled it and sat facing the backrest a few feet from Sullivan. He draped his arms over the top of the chair. “Nice try with the psychological manipulation, Sullivan. When we’re finished with you here, you’ll be on your way back to prison with that tube shoved up your nose.”

Sullivan turned his head to look up at Bennet. “I see the alliances have shifted, Bennet. I wouldn’t have imagined you two working together. I’m afraid you have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“Why don’t you tell us about that?” Bennet asked, prompting a chuckle from the ink-stained carnie.

“What can I say? They’re Russians, a very resourceful people with a long and turbulent history.”

Sylar rolled his eyes as much at the smug expression Sullivan wore as the man’s predilection for inane philosophic waxing. “Russians as a resourceful people, huh? You should fire whoever writes your dialogue. It’s not as insightful as you think. Give me numbers. How many specials do they have?”

“More than enough to overpower the three of you. Four if we count Peter, but I don’t think we can count him anymore. Do you?” Sullivan inquired with a wide-eyed expression of false concern.

Sylar’s jaw tightened at Sullivan’s talent for landing so many arrows at once. He was fed up with the man’s evasive responses that caused him to suspect that the carnie was aware of his lie-detecting ability. He unleashed a telekinetic grip on the man’s throat, causing Sullivan’s hind-quarters to rise several inches above the seat of his chair and his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise if not fear. “I want answers!” Sylar growled. “Were you working with them or did you have a plan? What do they know?”

Sullivan couldn’t speak while being strangled. Sylar maintained the pressure anyway, long enough to let the man feel his own pulse threatening to burst his capillaries. Bennet caught on to the good cop, bad cop routine or maybe his warning was genuine as he voiced Sylar’s name. Either way, Sylar relaxed his grip, allowing Sullivan to sink back to his chair. Heaving for breath and gulping oxygen in frantic gasps, the man still managed to laugh at his captors. “You’re good,” he said with breathless hilarity. “Both of you. Almost enough to fool an old hustler like me, but not quite. You’re not going to kill me.”

Sylar sprang from the chair and tossed it aside. “I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you,” he said, his voice pitched low with genuine menace. Damn his promise to Peter, he’d gladly snuff every last molecule of air from the bastard’s lungs and beg for forgiveness later. If Peter couldn’t forgive Sylar for doing whatever it took to save his life and disrupt the plot to wipe out DC, then damn him, too.

Sullivan watched Sylar stalk closer then shifted his gaze to Bennet, who feigned an innocent shrug. “I couldn’t stop him if I tried, Sullivan, and I’m not sure I want to.”

Despite their warring motivations, the men were three sides of an equilateral triangle — a narcissistic film-flam artist, a brilliant, ruthless killer and a stone-cold company man. At the moment, Sullivan was the odd-man out and he seemed to grasp at last that he didn’t have the upper-hand.

“I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know,” he said, and Sylar felt the distant ping of a partial lie but it didn’t matter how the Russians knew, only that they did. Peter’s escape hatch had slammed shut.

“You self-serving bastard,” he said in a soft voice, letting the blue sparks of electricity crackling at the tips of his fingers do the shouting for him. Succumbing to the temptation, he noted with dark satisfaction how Sullivan’s body bucked from the jolt. Every trace of smugness was blasted from the man’s face as his features contorted and his limbs flopped like a stuffed toy in the mouth of a rottweiler.

Sylar shot an evil grin at Bennet, having finally managed to evoke a genuine expression from the unflappable older man. It was curiosity shining through those horn-rimmed glasses and for once, Sylar could appreciate what the man was feeling. If Bennet wondered how far Sylar might go, Sylar questioned why Bennet didn’t try to stop him. Not that Bennet could prevent him from incinerating the carnie. Was he enjoying the spectacle? Or did Bennet prefer Sylar behaving like the devil he thought he knew?

It was Claire who intervened. She had been quiet throughout the interrogation, having no role other than witness. Now she jumped in front of the lightning bolts, jerking back from the force and refusing to be dissuaded. “Stop!” She demanded. “You can’t kill him!! We’re supposed to be the good guys.”

Sylar had been modulating the voltage with careful precision, intending to inflict shock and pain with minimal damage beyond a few scorch marks to the man’s clothing. He was chastened anyway by how much he’d enjoyed it.

“Believe me, he’d be dead already if I meant to kill him,” Sylar said, his eyebrow rising as if connected by a lever to his descending hands. “But if I ever had any doubt who you're related to,” he added with a piercing look at Claire, “consider me convinced. You sounded just like your uncle.”

Sullivan was recovering from the ordeal with his usual equanimity. “You’re always going to need somebody else to be your conscience, Sylar,” he said as he righted himself in his chair. “A leopard never changes its spots no matter how much it might wish it could.”

Pivoting back to Sullivan, Sylar said, “Good thing I’m not a leopard then. But don’t worry. The night is young and I’m only warming up. Now start talking because, trust me, Claire doesn’t have _that_ much influence on my conscience. I want to know everything you said, saw, heard, did and thought about while you were with the Russians.”


	7. Chapter 7

When they were finished with Sullivan, Bennet handed him over to the CIA team for safe-keeping. Bleeding heart Peter had wanted the carnies to take custody of him once the mission was complete, insisting that now that they knew how his power functioned, they were better qualified to contain him than the criminal justice system could ever be. Sylar didn't care one way or the other and who knew what Bennet thought.

Back in his own room, Sylar formulated Plan B, checking Peter’s backpack for the supplies he would need. After infiltrating the compound, Sylar bent to check the pulses of the two guards he’d just choked with telekinesis. They were unconscious but otherwise fine. He had never said he was going to be a saint, only that he wouldn’t kill anyone if he could avoid it. He couldn’t keep the guards in a chokehold indefinitely as that could kill them, which was why he’d raided Peter’s medical supplies earlier. Now he injected each of them with a dose of valium, just enough to buy him time.

Using the card key he’d lifted from the one of the guards, he unlocked the door, slipped into the darkened room and disabled the camera, then made his way over to the cot where he could make out the shape of a captive special, asleep in a drug-induced haze. Gently, Sylar pulled at the tube in the man’s nose to dislodge it and waited for him to regain consciousness, shapeshifting back to his own body. Peter made a loud groan as he began to awaken, leaving Sylar no choice but to clamp a telekinetic muffle over his mouth. “Shhh,” he whispered, “it’s me.” He sat on the narrow cot, nudging Peter over with his hip. Peter bucked against him in alarm, still too drug-addled to realize what was happening. Sylar didn’t want to hold Peter down, but Peter wouldn’t stop thrashing so Sylar reluctantly held him in a loose TK embrace, while his hands cupped Peter’s face. Leaning closer, he grazed his mouth over Peter’s ear and whispered. “It’s okay, Peter. It’s just me. I’ve got you.”

Peter was breathing erratically but at Sylar’s voice in his ear, his body stilled and he exhaled. “Sylar? What’s going on?”

“I had to warn you. We talked to Sullivan. The Russians know that specials can’t be harmed by their own powers.”

“So he _was_ working with them.” Peter sat up and his breathing calmed further as Sylar released the telekinesis that had been pinning him.

“No, but he was more cooperative than he needed to be, the coward. Plan A isn’t going to work. Moscow’s not going to buy you burying yourself in a sinkhole before you could do any real damage, especially if all the other specials magically escape. They'll know you didn’t die.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “We stick to the plan and we worry about Moscow later. Rebel can still shut down all their power and you, Claire and Noah can get everyone out. The Russians can’t stop me if they don’t want to end up under a mountain of dirt.”

“They can if they have a helicopter. Sullivan said they do. Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you?” Sylar hadn’t spotted any obvious injuries but he couldn’t help the spike of anxiety that made him ask.

“No, I’m fine but you need to get out of here. Can’t you disable the helicopter? What about the list Rebel was compiling of the captive specials and their abilities?”

“I was going to have Rebel work on the helicopter tonight but it’s not here. So either he’ll crash it when the time comes or we’ll figure something else out. Bennet has the list. It’s incomplete but most of the abilities are useless. There’s a reason so many of those people were with the carnival, Peter. I just want to warn you to be ready for anything. You’re going to have to make it look good. You might have to take them all down.” Peter wouldn’t like that but he wasn’t a saint, nor so naive to think they could pull this mission off without the possibility of casualties. Like any addict swearing off substances, even the necessary ones, Sylar would feel better if Peter did it. He wasn’t proud of wanting to lay it on Peter’s conscience and underneath that was an even more shameful thought — it wouldn’t begin to even the score but it would up Peter’s tally. Sylar would help him exorcise the guilt.

“Yeah, okay.” Peter nodded as if it would be easy, as if he didn’t have a track record of erratic control of his abilities. Then again, he’d done well at the carnival. And at Stanton, much to Sylar’s everlasting regret. There was also Mercy, another of his encounters with Peter he wished he could forget. Maybe having one ability at a time made it easier for Peter to focus. Interrupting Sylar’s train of thought, Peter urged him to leave before anyone realized the camera was disabled and came to check.

Sylar answered with a longing press of his lips to Peter’s. Peter returned it briefly but when the kiss became more involved, he wrenched his head away and pushed against Sylar’s chest. “No, come on, man. It’s not safe for you to be here. Go!”

“Mmm, not yet,” Sylar said, his voice low and edged with deep, dark secrets that he was eager to share. He flicked his tongue at Peter’s earlobe, then sucked it into his mouth and bit down, not hard enough to hurt. Well maybe just a small, pleasureable kind of pain. Peter was still pushing at him, but the pressure was weakening and a moan slipped out at Sylar’s teeth sinking into his earlobe. Sylar’s hands raked through his companion’s hair and clutched handfuls in his fists while his lips dragged across Peter’s jaw until he found his mouth again, wishing he could ravish him right now and knowing there wasn’t time. He had just wanted this brief connection. “Danger gets me so hot and bothered,” he murmured against Peter’s lips before covering them again with his own.

“Sylar, stop,” Peter said, pulling away, and it was like old times again, Sylar the seducer and Peter saying no with his mouth while the rest of him said something entirely different. Sylar had never thought he’d be nostalgic for Parkman’s trap but he’d had Peter all to himself then. Peter’s invisible people had come between them for the better part of their five years together, but once Sylar had won him over, Peter was his. Now the very real people were getting in his way again and if their interference wasn’t bad enough, Sylar had to worry about keeping Peter safe, too.

No, that wasn’t quite accurate. Peter had never completely belonged to him. He recalled how Peter would steal out of bed in the darkness and go back to his own place in the waning weeks of their captivity. Sylar was good enough for the bump and grind, he was good enough for daytime company in that lonely world, and now, he was good enough to be a partner in intrigue and a quasi-bedmate but not-quite-lover. What would it take to win Peter’s stubborn heart that he gave so freely to everyone else?

Sylar let a quiet sigh escape. “Fine. I’m going.” He reached for the tube that had drugged Peter into oblivion before he’d arrived. “I have to put you back to sleep now,” he said, tasting the regret at what he was about to do. He had no choice. “Ready?”

“I’m ready. Be careful getting out, alright?”

“The irony of you worrying about me,” Sylar said with a shake of his head. He inserted the tube back into Peter’s nose, cupping his cheek one last time before departing. “Don't take any stupid chances tomorrow.”

By the sound of his slurred response, Peter was already sinking under the drug’s influence. “Mmkay, be fine.”

Sylar shapeshifted before exiting the way he’d come. The guards were stirring outside Peter’s room, but the security door was locked as it had been when he arrived, the camera in the room was now operating and the card key was back in the pocket of the man from whom he had extracted it. Everything was as he’d found it. Hopefully the guards would think they’d fallen asleep. He’d be long gone by then.

And then he felt it, the irresistible, insatiable desire, the most powerful lust he’d ever known. He’d learned to control it in the presence of one special, sometimes several at a time. It had called to him at the carnival but fresh from escaping Parkman’s prison with his first opportunity to prove he wasn’t that guy anymore, he had been able to withstand the urges. Now he was in a place teeming with power that could be his. Just one tiny taste...would it be enough? He could do it. The rational part of his brain reminded Sylar why he was here and what was at stake. _Ah but it could be my own special secret._ No! He wasn’t going to throw away everything he’d fought so hard to gain. _Eternity alone._ He already had some idea of what that was like and he couldn’t face it again.  _I don’t have to if nobody finds out_. The evil urgent hunger slithered through his mind, cajoling him to forget the man whose taste was still on his tongue, forget his promise and the guilt and shame that would wrack him when it was done. _Evil isn’t something you are. It’s a choice._ That was Peter’s voice in his head, the exact words he’d said to Sylar in the nightmare city. _Oh Peter, you have no idea how evil I am_. Trembling and shivering like a junkie in the throes of withdrawal, Sylar made his choice.

As he landed in the motel parking lot after leaving the compound, a dark shape outside his room moved, stepping forward to reveal a bespectacled man in a tan trench coat. _Fucking Bennet, how the hell did he know?_

“What do you think you're doing?” Bennet asked.

“Getting some fresh air and now, going to bed. Big day tomorrow.” Sylar threw him a smug glance and approached his room at an unhurried pace. He waved a hand and the door opened.

“The maverick act doesn’t work, Sylar.” Bennet took a step closer. “I’m running this mission and your move tonight could have gotten us all killed. Well, not you and I’m sure you couldn’t care less about me or anyone else but what about him?”

Sylar swiveled his head to make eye contact with Bennet who didn’t flinch from the glare aimed at him. “ _He’s_ fine. I made sure of that. I’m not about to let him go into this blindly. I’m not here for you and I sure as hell don’t take orders from you. If you want my cooperation, show some respect.” Stepping through the doorway, Sylar turned away from the older man, flicked on the lamp without touching it and released his jacket to fly across the room where it landed on the chair opposite the bed. Only then did he glance back at the still opened door and Bennet standing just outside his room, hands in the pockets of his coat, watching Sylar with a blank stare. Sylar had to admire the man’s nerve, when a twitch of Sylar’s finger was all that was needed to kill him. The two men remained locked In their duel of glaring eyeballs.

Bennet broke eye contact first. “So you saw Peter. Is that all you did?”

“No. I tried to find the helicopter so Rebel could disable it but it’s not there. We’ll have to play that part by ear.”

“And that’s all?”

“What do — yes!” He snapped. “That’s all. Did you really think…” He didn’t finish the sentence, because of course that was exactly what Bennet thought. Why wouldn’t he? Sylar was still shaken by how close he’d just come to wrecking everything.

“So there are some things more powerful than the hunger after all,” Bennet said, seeming to read Sylar‘s mind without any abilities at all. “I would never have believed it.” Sylar couldn’t tell by Bennet’s unaccented tone whether he was being snide or truly surprised. He turned away, uncomfortable with the way Bennet was assessing him, and the next thing he heard was the man’s retreating footsteps.

Sylar let the door shut and exhaled. The only thing more exasperating than the Bennets — father and daughter — was the Petrellis, the reckless one who’d gotten him into this aggravating mission and the older, meaner one he suspected was behind it all. He conveniently forgot he was the one who had persuaded Peter that they should find out what Bennet was up to.

***

  
Angela was just returning to the Petrelli mansion after having dined with the state department attaché and his partner, who was also his wife. The man was a stolid bore but his wife was lively and charming and matched Angela’s taste for red wine and high-level political gossip. Their area of expertise was Russia and Angela was curious to know whether word about her mission with Noah had spread beyond the supposedly secret CIA unit working with Noah behind the scenes.

She couldn’t ask directly nor could the two foreign service workers engage in open conversation about possible state secrets. But there were ways of saying one thing while meaning another and that was Angela’s talent. Dreaming about the future was a worthless ability without the skills and contacts to make use of whatever she learned.

She didn’t learn much. Either her companions really were in the dark or they weren’t about to let her know what they knew. That was unfortunate because the dreams had been maddeningly imprecise about the finer details of how Peter would die. There was only the powerful dread of icy fingers prying her heart loose from its mooring. The only way she knew to protect her son was to ensure that Noah did his job well enough to stop the Russians and put Sylar down once and for all. What remained unclear was Sylar’s goal. Why would he kill Peter? He didn’t need Peter’s ability. Was it revenge against her or was Sylar along for the proximity to the banquet of abilities represented by the specials the Russians had kidnapped? If so, then Noah had been correct that the mission was leading to the very event Angela hoped to prevent but that was often the way it worked. After all, Sylar had plenty of opportunities to kill Peter if that had been his primary goal and perhaps that eventuality was only a by-product. There was little but a hair’s breadth between the possibility that Sylar would succeed and Peter would die or that Noah would be the victor and Peter would survive. Her only certainty was that the hand of fate was holding the roulette wheel the way her dreams had directed and she had little choice but to take her spin.

As if her thoughts alone could influence events, Angela’s home phone rang. The number that came up on the phone’s display was unfamiliar. It could be a telemarketer, a phishing scam, a wrong number or anybody she didn’t want to talk to right now. It could also be Noah, reporting in from a throw-away phone instead of his regular number. She screened the call and sure enough, it was Noah’s voice asking her to pick up. Angela pressed the speaker button and greeted him, while removing her pearl earrings.

“I found his Achilles heel,” he said without preamble. “You’re not going to like it.”

Setting the pearl studs on the phone table, Angela reached behind her neck to unfasten the string of pearls encircling her throat. “Don’t be coy. I take it you haven’t found his kill spot or you’d be less cryptic. What is it?”

“Your son.”

Angela’s hands halted in midair along with the breath that caught in her throat waiting for Noah to say more. There was nothing in Noah’s conversational tone that would suggest he was going for shock value except for the way he was dragging out the punchline.

“What are you saying, Noah?”

“Well,” Noah said, elongating the syllable. “I expect you know that Sylar has been living in Peter’s apartment since the carnival.”

“Yes of course I’m aware of that. Peter didn’t admit it in so many words but he did tell me a rather insane story.” She gave Noah a truncated version of what Peter had told her. “Knowing Peter, it’s the truth and explains their so-called friendship. Peter believes that having friends will give Sylar reasons to … control himself. It’s not all that different from what I tried to do.”

Noah made an odd choking sound and then cleared his throat as if to speak, but the line remained silent. An ugly picture was forming in Angela's mind that was nothing like the way she had used Sylar. It was brilliant, actually, or would have been if it were anyone but Peter. An uncharacteristic shudder went through her entire body. “You’re telling me that it’s … more than that?”

“Oh yes.” Noah briefed her on everything that had happened since they last spoke — Sylar’s fingers shooting sparks in the hotel room, his deliberate attempt to fry Sullivan, going awol to warn Peter. Angela listened, her sense of foreboding increasing. Was this what her dream had been telling her, that Sylar would botch the mission and get Peter killed? It was unimaginable that Sylar would behave so erratically. Ruthlessness, she could understand but raging out of control? He had always been so clever, methodical and calculating. It was terrifying. But then, Angela’s practical reason that had momentarily been subsumed by shock returned. If the mission had been compromised, Noah would have said so at the outset. So things were still proceeding according to plan and now they had the opportunity to quite literally kill two birds with one stone, while also resolving her newly discovered problem of the illicit relationship between her son and the killer.

“What’s your plan?” she inquired, composed once again. Kicking her heels off, she began to remove the pins from her hair as she listened to Noah.

“Whatever it takes,” she said when Noah had finished, “but I want my son alive, Noah.”

***

  
Sylar wasn’t sleeping. He didn’t think he would be able to get any shut eye at all but it didn’t matter. He could function on less sleep than he had before acquiring regeneration. It was only frustrating because lying awake all night gave him too much time to think about all the ways that the mission could go wrong. He was rearranging his pillow when he heard the tread of stealthy footsteps outside his door. He sat up and focused his hearing when there was a low tap. It had to be Claire. Bennet wouldn’t be so cloak and dagger and at this hour, it wasn’t housekeeping.

He went to the door and spoke in a low voice. “What do you want?”

“I need to tell you something.” Rolling his eyes, he opened the door the normal way because his abilities seemed to spook Claire, and quickly drew her in by her elbow. He released her at once, not wanting to touch her any more than necessary. She might not be afraid of him anymore, but he didn’t need to see that grimace of disgust at every encounter.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Sylar said, reaching for his jeans and stepping into them. “I’m starting to think you enjoy catching me in the altogether.”

“Oh shut up, you egomaniac.” Claire glared at him. She was wearing the clothes she’d had on earlier minus her coat — white sneakers, a black long sleeved shirt of Peter’s that hung loosely on her tiny body, and her own jeans. “Believe me, if I had any other choice at all….”

Sylar was about to say something snarky when Claire spoke again.

“My father has a plan. He said he’d let me know what it is when the time is right but he was lying.” Claire folded her arms tightly across her chest, angling her body away from Sylar, who was now sitting sprawled in the chair.

“What else is new?” he stated rhetorically. "I mean, Claire, at the risk of offending you, which I know I do just by existing, your father is not exactly the trustworthy type. But you didn’t come here to confide in me about your family drama. I’m not sure why you’d come to me at all.”

“I heard him on the phone,” she said, still speaking to the rest of the room instead of addressing Sylar face to face. He supposed that was understandable given their history. “I’m in the room right next to him. He wanted to book us into the same room and I told him that 19 year old girls don’t share motel rooms with their fathers. That’s not the real reason. He wouldn’t talk to anyone in front of me.” Claire’s eyes darted to where Sylar was sitting and then away. A wrinkle was forming between her eyebrows.

Sylar chuckled and the frown on Claire’s face deepened.

“You don’t expect me to be surprised by your revelation, do you?” he asked, reflexively springing to a more alert posture when Claire spun and stalked close enough to pounce. “Don’t you dare talk down to me!” her voice was low but vibrating with emotion as she leaned forward. “I’m not going to take that from you of all people. You don’t get to treat me like some kid who doesn't know anything after all the shit I’ve been through!”

Sylar rearranged his face, dispensing with the sarcasm. He was never going to win her over after what he’d done to her and he wouldn’t bother trying but for Peter’s sake, he should avoid giving her extra reasons to hate him. At the very least, it could help to know if she’d overheard anything useful.

“Claire,” he said, going for a respectful tone of voice. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that your father is so transparent when it comes to me.” Considering it further, it was surprising she was even telling him, instead of joining her father’s plot. Or was this part of the plot? So far nothing she said had tripped his lie-detecting ability but that could be factored into Bennet’s plan.

Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Why would you try to help me — of all people?”

“It has nothing to do with _you_!” As if to underscore her disdain, Claire turned and walked several feet away before facing Sylar again. “I don’t care about you. I don’t like my father and my grandmother using Peter as a pawn in their sick game. She has to be involved, I just know it.” Okay, so that was all true and Sylar suspected that he didn’t need his ability to tell him that. Claire’s sincerity was evident in every word she had spoken and in the way her fake brown eyes met his without flinching. She was a lot like Peter, he realized, an open book, and underneath that whiny exterior, she was every bit as reckless and brave as her uncle. Chalk one up for Claire, because while Sylar might never count her as an ally, she had been rising in his esteem over the last few days.

“Well then we have a common goal,” he said, risking a small smile that he hoped was, well, not friendly but not creepy either. “I can work with that. Your uncle is important to me, too.”

There was that grimace on Claire’s face again chased by a puzzled frown that Sylar interpreted as having to do with the elephant in the room that had been waltzing around unaddressed since Claire had first barged in to Peter’s apartment.

“He told you, then, didn’t he? And you’re wondering why.” Sylar made it a statement of fact rather than a question. Might as well get it all out in the open.

“No, not really.” She looked at him directly.

“Ah. Of course. You understand what I see in him. How could anyone not? You don’t get what he sees in me,” he said, nodding in answer to her unspoken appraisal. He shook his head and shrugged, as bewildered as she was. “Damned if I know.”

***

Peter could feel that Samuel’s power had intensified since he had touched the man during the trade the night before. It was only this morning, when he’d been led through the compound where all the specials were housed, that he’d seen any of the others. He couldn’t help thinking he had been brought here to fuel up and not just on breakfast.

The other specials appeared drugged, though there were no tubes in their noses. The sedation was evident in their dull, slack-eyed expressions. They ate their food mechanically, barely giving Peter a glance. He didn’t know many of the people from the carnival, only that clone guy who had been at Matt Parkman’s house and the super-speed man with the knives. Neither of them seemed to recognize him or else they were too out-of-it to care.

Peter was keyed up, but he forced a few bites of toast and drank the lousy coffee he’d been offered. His legs were still shackled but his hands were free, and as he sipped the brown sludge, an older man in a suit approached the cafeteria-style table where Peter sat. The two guards who had escorted him the night before were seated on either side of Peter and they sat up straighter as the man drew near. The suited man slid onto the bench across the table from Peter and reached a hand out. “Mr. Petrelli,” he said, as Peter shook his hand. “I have been eager to meet you.”

“And you are….?” Peter asked.

“It is not important that you know my name. I trust that you are prepared? I must say that this power you have is quite interesting. You are able to acquire the power of any of these …?” The man gestured towards the others seated throughout the room, about a hundred people was Peter’s guess.

“Yeah,” Peter said, with disguised wariness, remembering his father’s oft-stated advice to never ask a question you didn't already know the answer to. The man was testing him. “It works through touch. But only one power at a time.”

“Yes that is what I have heard. Well, I don’t mean to rush you if you have not finished your meal but it is nearly time. Shall we?” The man stood up and nodded to the men sitting beside Peter, who helped him to maneuver his legs over the bench so he could stand.

“Can you do something about these?” Peter pointed at his bound legs.

“Of course,” the man said and one of the guards crouched to free Peter from the shackles around his ankles. “I must inform you that there will be snipers surrounding the location. Once the mission is complete, you will of course be returned to your friends.”

There was nothing Peter could say to that. It was unlikely they would have set Samuel Sullivan free after using him and even less so they’d relinquish Peter when his ability was much more versatile than that of the carnie. The snipers had been expected and factored into the plan and were no match for Sylar’s abilities. Still, Peter couldn’t help being nervous and, he had to admit to himself, excited, too. All of these captive people were counting on him even if they had no idea what was about to happen. Unlike all the other times he had felt the calling to save people, this time he had the most powerful ally of all on his side.

They exited the building. The Russian man with no name climbed into a Jeep SUV and one of the guards motioned Peter to follow, then both got in behind him. The Jeep traveled a winding road before turning off-road to take a bumpy path through woods that opened onto a field of low, rolling hills.

The ocean was visible in the distance, too far to hear the surf but Peter could smell the salt air through the open window. The Jeep came to a stop. Before Peter could jump out, the suited man stopped him. “Wait,” he directed, “you must wear this. You will wait for the order.” He handed Peter an earpiece and watched as Peter attached it to his ear. Peter raised his brows in an “alright?” gesture and the man pressed his cell phone to test the earpiece. “You can hear me?” Peter nodded and the man signaled with a slight push to his shoulder to disembark.

Peter watched the Jeep drive away, shrinking as it got further away before stopping on a rise to the east of where he stood. They were going to stay there and watch? Well he’d give them a show. Then the countdown began in his ear and finally the order came to commence the operation. It was a funny thing to say to a nurse, but then he wasn’t a nurse or an EMT right now. He raised his hands and concentrated Sullivan’s ability, furrowing his brow with the effort to draw forth the kinetic energy that would command the earth. The Jeep and the men in it ceased to matter as the power flowed through him. He’d had this ability before, when he’d tangled with Sullivan in Central Park, but he’d only used a fraction of its intensity then. Now, he needed to make the earth shake, rattle and roll enough to convince the Russians that he was conjuring an earthquake that would level Washington, DC. Noah had said there were Russians monitoring the situation in DC but the airspace there was impenetrable. That was some comfort although the people they were dealing with didn’t play around. Peter would have to make this look good.

The earth was shaking and with it, Peter’s entire body vibrated with the power radiating from his brain, through his spinal cord, and outward to the tips of his outstretched fingers. It took all of his mental energy to concentrate the effects of the power for an impressive yet harmless display.

Rolling waves of dirt spread across the field and cracks began to snake their way along the ground as dirt, rocks, boulders and shrubs tumbled into the widening slits. Peter’s mind emptied of nearly every thought, no longer worrying about how Sylar, Claire and Bennet would rescue the kidnapped specials and whether Rebel’s ability to tamper with the Russians’ technology would be enough to catch them unaware.

There was only this, the cataclysm emanating from his hands and the indescribable feeling of control and sheer power he possessed. A part of him that wasn’t really his was enjoying it; it was incredible. What he could do right now! The urge to destroy, to bring everything down around him, was gratifying and he fought to retain a shred of himself, who he was and why he was doing this. “Focus, Pete,” said the familiar voice in his head that was all he had left of his brother. “I’m trying, Nathan!” he shouted into the din of erupting, quaking earth. It was exhausting and he was tiring, not sure how much longer he could do this. He’d been so intent on what he was doing, he didn’t notice the helicopter that had come to hover above him. Stones and pebbles were bouncing all around, pelting him without any substantial force, and clouds of dirt swirled as he made the earth do his bidding.

A magnetic force came over him then, as if gravity had been reversed. What the ….? He was sweating and his muscles were burning but whatever was pulling at him was stronger than he was. Peter’s feet were light on the ground now and then only his toes were in contact with the surface when he became aware of the helicopter. With the back of one hand, Peter wiped the perspiration that was dripping from his forehead and making his eyes sting and tilted his head back to look up. Sylar! That’s what this was. The telekinesis was growing in its intensity and soon he was floating in the air, straight up to the copter. The higher he went, the further he could see the devastation he’d wrought, hoping the power had worked as intended to manifest destruction without any injuries to innocent people. The Jeep was no longer visible in the distance; either they had driven away or been sucked beneath the rumbling surface. A sharp pain in his back catapulted that thought and any others right out of his mind and knocked his trajectory out of whack. The multiple sensations were too much — first the searing pain, now heat blooming across his back, the exhaustion of using the power and the force of the telekinesis drawing him upward. A powerful yank had Peter stumbling into the helicopter. He coughed, blood spraying out of his mouth just before he fell unconscious into the arms of Noah Bennet.

***

Noah caught Peter as he fell, along with a face full of the blood that sprayed out of the younger man’s mouth. Shit! He hadn’t realized Peter had been injured and he knew before laying him down to inspect the wound that it was bad. His gun was still in his hand but no longer pointed at the pilot when he barked a command to fly the helicopter back to the compound. He motioned to the man with the tractor beam ability that had lured Peter into the helicopter. “Apply pressure to the wound. I have to find my daughter.” The call to Claire didn’t go through; she was out of range. He sent a text anyway and hoped that it would reach her. He tried Sylar next, wondering where the killer was and how he had managed to miss the sniper who had shot at Peter. Sylar wasn’t reachable either. Noah sent another text and now the familiar stoicism that rarely failed Noah Bennet began to desert him as he looked down at Peter lying on the floor and watched the color ebbing from his skin. He was already pale and there was a blue tinge around his mouth.

There wasn’t much time left and not much more that Noah could do. He wasn’t above using Peter for bait, but this had never been part of his plan. He glanced at the other man in the helicopter, meeting a pair of solemn dark eyes. “He’s dying, isn’t he?” It was a rhetorical question. Angela’s prophecy was coming true despite her command that she wanted her son alive. Noah knelt beside Peter and took over from the tractor-beam man whose hands were laid over Peter’s injury. This, at least, he could do for the young man who had been his daughter’s protector. “Hang in there, Peter. Stay with me. We’re going to get you help.” Peter didn’t answer, not that Noah had expected he would. He’d been unconscious since falling into the copter. But maybe Peter could hear him. Noah hoped so. “Take my phone,” he said to the tall, dark-eyed man. “Let’s keep trying to reach Claire or Sylar.”


	8. Chapter 8

 

The building was shaking as Claire sprinted through the darkened corridors with Rebel’s voice in her ear guiding her to the now unlocked rooms housing kidnapped specials. Rebel had said there were eighty-six people and kept count of how many she’d freed. Claire directed them to the exits and told them where to meet her. Rebel had arranged transport for them. Claire had no idea how he’d done it but everything he said panned out so she wasted no time or mental energy questioning it. It was quicker and easier to act. Her father was taking care of the guards and officials at the compound while Sylar had flown off to conduct reconnaissance of the area, looking for snipers.

Claire emerged from a room with an older woman behind her, turning her head to the right to make sure the way was clear. Before she could look to her left, she felt a head-jarring whack that made her vision spin and the floor tilt. Landing face down, Claire took a minute to get her bearings. The woman she’d just freed was struggling with a man, presumably the one who’d hit Claire with his rifle. He shoved the woman against the wall and pointed the gun at her. “No!” Claire shouted and it seemed like an eternity before the coiled energy in her limbs obeyed her intentions and launched her to intercept the bullets. Too late, she heard the click of the safety releasing and the roar of a bullet firing but the roar ended in a splat as the gun morphed into a misshapen lump of what looked like clay and the now mushy bullet plopped to the floor. The man stared at it for a second or two, tossed it aside with a look of exasperated disgust and went for the woman’s throat. Claire pivoted and aimed her own gun at the man. She didn’t have much experience with guns but at this close range, she could easily blow his head off. She didn’t want to — he wasn’t armed anymore and there was no need to kill him. All she wanted was to stop him long enough to let the other woman get away. “Run!” she yelled, taking off after the woman. There were people coming from every direction now as some of the specials Claire had freed were helping others escape. She managed to lose the man whose gun had been destroyed and burst out of the exit with her charge in tow. Once they neared the tree line, Claire slowed and waited for her new companion. “Neat ability,” she said to the dark-haired woman, who looked to be about Meredith’s age. The woman was bent over with her hands on her thighs, winded and gasping. She appeared fit but they’d been running hard and the drug was probably still wearing off. “I’m Claire.”

Gray eyes met Claire’s and the woman nodded. “Jaime,” she said between deep breaths. “What’s happening?”

“Long story,” Claire replied, pointing into the woods. “There are others up ahead. I’ll catch up later. I need to go back inside.”

With the last dozen or so of the freed specials behind her, Claire trekked through the woods to the clearing where they were all instructed to meet. Several of the people whose abilities could be useful wanted to go back and fight but Claire insisted that they put some space between themselves and the compound first. She needed to touch base with the others for an update on their status. There might not be any need to fight. As far as she could tell, everything had gone according to plan.

“Where are you, Claire?” Her father’s urgent voice through the phone sounded in her earpiece. “I need you back at the compound right now.”

“You’ll have to finish rounding everyone up,” she said to the people gathered. “There should be eight-six of you. I have to go.”

“Dad!?” She was already running back towards the compound, heedless of the tree branches catching at her clothing and hair and whipping her in the face. Fortunately she didn’t tire but she could only run so fast. “Did you find Peter? What’s going on?”

“It’s bad. Hurry. Sylar’s looking for you. We’re right outside the compound. I don’t want to move him.”

Claire stifled the panicked sob rising into her throat and tried to run faster. “Rebel?” She called out, hoping he’d pick up her signal and alert Sylar. A whoosh of air sounded behind her and then Sylar’s voice. “Incoming. Get ready, Claire.” She was lifted into the air before she knew it was happening, or how, when the former killer flew alongside of her. Incredulous, she looked down at the ground below, behind her at the treetops rushing away and then at Sylar whose face was grim and focused on his task. It must be telekinesis, tethering her to Sylar so that she could fly, too.

It took thirty-six seconds to fly over the woods and spot the sprawling compound and the helicopter parked outside the building.

“Wait,” Claire yelled as they began their descent, Sylar pulling ahead of her. “What if it’s a trap?”

They landed a few feet from the helicopter and Sylar rushed forward, turning to grab Claire by the hand. “What if it’s not? Come on.” With a final burst of Sylar’s telekinesis, Claire felt herself being swung through the open door of the helicopter where her father was kneeling over Peter’s prone body.

“Does it work if he’s already dead?” he asked, looking up at Claire through lenses that were dotted with gruesome spatters of what could only be blood. His hands were bloodied, too, uselessly pressing down on a wadded lump of red-stained cloth against Peter’s bared back. Peter’s jacket and shirt were scrunched up above the wound.

“I don’t know!” she wailed, dropping beside her father and wriggling free of her coat. The pouch was already in her hand. Claire began the process she and Peter had practiced, glad now that he’d insisted on doing it so many times because her hands were shaking, her heart was beating way too fast and tears were already creating a film that blurred her vision.

Blinking the tears away and taking a breath to quell the trembling, Claire finished cleaning a spot on her arm and removed the butterfly needle from the pouch. She didn’t know what to do with the pouch now while she attached the long thin tubing to the needle. A gentle pull and the pouch containing the collection tube and syringe was floating in the air. Claire met Sylar’s solemn dark eyes for a second and murmured a thank you.

“As long as he’s not brain dead, it should work. It hasn’t been that long,” Sylar said. “You’ve got this.”

She hoped he was right. He sounded more confident than she felt. She pierced her skin with the needle, blessedly finding a vein on the first try, and watched with a glimmer of relief as the blood started to snake its way through the tube.

***

 _I’ve seen him like this before. I've done this to him before and it's my fault again_. Sylar detected a grayish cast to Peter’s skin and streaks of blood on his face. A taste of ashes accompanied the memories, some of them not his own, of Peter dead, just like this, with his profile partially hidden by the mop of dark hair that had fallen over his forehead. Sylar wanted to grab the implements from Claire and handle it himself. But he didn’t. This was something Claire needed to do. He could help, though, levitating the pouch when he noticed her confusion and offering a brief pep talk that was more confident than he felt.

Now that the blood was flowing through the tube, Claire gave in to the tears. The hardest part was done and now it remained to be seen whether Peter’s brain was intact enough for the healing blood to revive him. Claire was sobbing so hard that her tears cut rivulets of clean skin through the smudges of dirt on her face. _I came all this way to see him._ That memory wasn’t Sylar’s either but it hurt just the same.

When the tube was full, Claire pulled the needle free. Sylar knew what came next. “Band aid?” he offered and Claire said, “Yeah, thanks” and let him apply it. It wasn’t strictly necessary when the vein would close on its own but for the moment it was useful to keep the blood from spurting out of her arm. There was enough blood at this scene already.

“Are you all right, Claire? Can I help you?” Bennet asked, but Claire shook her head without glancing at him.

Sylar, Claire and Peter had died several times over and Claire had probably done it more than he and Peter combined. According to Peter, Claire had once described it as “no big deal.” Sylar didn’t believe that and Claire’s tear-stained face said that she didn’t think so either. Maybe she was only cavalier about her own ability to vanquish the grim reaper. Sylar could relate to that. Other people’s deaths were more painful than one’s own, although he hadn’t always felt that way.

Claire was ready now to inject Peter with her blood. Sylar had already removed Peter’s arm from his coat, rolled up the sleeve and disinfected the area where Claire’s needle was about to plunge. That, too, was probably unnecessary given regeneration, but why take the chance of dirt or germs getting into the bloodstream that might cause problems later, when Peter gave up regeneration for another ability. “Thanks,” she said again, bringing the tip of the needle to Peter’s skin and pushing down on the syringe of blood slowly until it was empty. Nobody spoke as they waited for something to happen, some sign that the healing would be successful.

Seconds ticked by and turned into minutes. It didn’t usually take this long for the healing to initiate. Sylar realized he was holding his breath and when he looked at Claire and Bennet, their faces had the same pinched anticipation mingled with dread that he was feeling. The barest hint of color returned to Peter’s lips first and Sylar wasn’t sure whether it was wishful thinking until the pallor of death began to fade and Peter’s skin pinked up. He had closed Peter’s eyelids because he couldn’t bear that blank stare of death so he didn’t get to see the light returning to the one eye that was visible with Peter’s head turned. The cough as his lungs reinflated was just as good. Claire was leaning over with one hand on Peter’s cheek and the other stroking his messy hair. “Claire….” he said, lifting his head with a fond little quirk of a smile. “I was dead, huh? Good thing we practiced.”

“Oh, Peter,” she said and bent low to kiss his forehead. “You’re a good teacher. I did it on the first try. I love you.” She burst into sobs all over again.

“I love you, too,” Peter said as he pushed himself to a sitting position. “Hey.” He brushed Claire’s cheek with his knuckles. “You just keep showing up to save my life.” Now he was looking past Claire at Sylar. “Both of you.”

Sylar didn’t say anything. The near-certainty that Claire’s blood would return Peter from just beyond the brink of death didn’t change the way it had felt to see him dead. They could talk about it all later. Right now, he was letting Claire recover from what had to be similar emotions. When she finally let go of her uncle and stood up, she held out a hand for Peter to get to his feet.

One by one, they climbed out of the helicopter. Bennet was the last to emerge. “Peter, you’re a sight for sore eyes. I’m glad you’re alright and Claire, I’m very proud of you.” He patted Peter’s shoulder with a hand that was still covered with dried blood and turned his head towards the helicopter behind him. “You can come out now.”

Claire, Peter and Sylar exchanged glances before Sylar realized, too late, what was happening. A tall thin black man emerged from the helicopter, dressed like an elegant European fashion model. “You remember my old friend, René, don’t you?” Bennet drew a gun from inside his coat and pointed it at Sylar.

“Don’t try anything, Peter. It would give me more pleasure than you can imagine to shoot him.”

Peter’s eyebrows gathered like a thundercloud about to give way. “This is low, Noah, even for you.”

“Dad, I can’t believe you’re doing this now!” Claire said. “You promised you would tell me when. I trusted you!”

Sylar smirked at the ping that tingled his brain, not that he needed it to know Claire was lying. She’d been right that it was a trap and he’d been a fool. Emotions make you sloppy and his had gotten the better of him. He wouldn’t give Bennet the satisfaction of getting angry, though, as he pondered his options. It was two on two, no abilities and one of them had a gun. Three of the four men were seasoned at hand-to-hand combat and he wasn’t one of them. The odds weren’t in his favor and the wild card was a five foot nothing young woman who hated him as much as her father did.

He met Peter’s eyes and they exchanged a wordless message.

“Fuck it, Peter,” he said, bluffing. “He’s right. I know when I’m beat. Come on, Bennet, let’s get it over with. Do it! Shoot me!”

Bennet chuckled. “That’s not how it’s going to go, Sylar. You’re not calling the shots — pun intended. Put him down, René.”

The Haitian dipped his head in assent and approached Sylar. Before he and Peter could rush the other two men, Claire distracted everyone with a cheerleader extraordinaire launch into her father’s arms. “Don’t do this, daddy! Please! This is wrong. He’s not hurting anyone. He helped save all of those people! You aren’t giving Peter a chance to try it his way.”

Bennet blinked in a rare show of surprise at his daughter's impassioned plea for mercy. _For me of all people,_ Sylar thought. The shocks to his system were coming faster than yellow jackets at a late summer barbecue. “Peter’s way would get a lot of people killed,” Bennet said, trying to pry Claire’s arms from around his waist while maintaining his posture with the gun aimed at Sylar. “Don’t get in the middle of this, Claire.”

With everyone’s attention absorbed by the drama, nobody noticed the dark haired woman who peered around a corner of the building and stepped forward, behind Bennet’s back, until she spoke.

“Is everything okay, Claire? I thought you might need help.”

“Jaime!” Claire said, looking past her father’s shoulder. “The gun!”

Noah spun towards the threat behind him. Nothing happened, at least not that Sylar could see, but something must have because Peter’s eyes had opened wide and then he laughed. What the hell? “It’s a fair fight now, Noah,” Peter was saying. “But that’s not what you want, is it?”

Bennet had no response and finally Sylar could see what the problem was when he stepped sideways, conveniently away from the Haitian and just enough to spot the amorphous blob in the older man’s hand that moments before had been a gun. It was so unexpected that for once, Sylar was at a loss for anything snarky to say, though it was a handy ability. Did it work only on guns, or all weapons, or was it a specific type of object, perhaps a type of material composition, that responded to the ability? The itch to know, to understand it for himself, whispered in his head.

“You alright, Sylar?” Peter asked and Sylar realized he must have been staring at the woman who had come out of nowhere. He shook it off just in time to notice more specials gathering behind the mystery woman. A few of them were people Sylar recognized from the carnival.

“Let us know how we can help, Claire,” one of the men said.

“It’s okay,” Claire replied. “He’s my father. I just want him to leave them alone.” She pointed with her chin at Peter and Sylar.

“Doesn't seem like he has any leverage to stop them,” the man replied. Sylar couldn’t believe how this was going down, saved by a cheerleader, a clay-maker and a bunch of people whose heads he would have relished cutting into in another lifetime. It was almost enough to ruin his reputation but he was okay with that. Hell even Superman had kryptonite.

“Let’s get out of here,” Peter said to Sylar. “Claire, is there someplace you want to go?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Lemme just make sure Rebel can take it from here and then I want to go home and sleep for a week.”


	9. Chapter 9

“I have good news and bad news,” Noah said to Angela over the phone much later. It had been a long day. Claire had left him to clean up and restage the scene, but the carnies and other freed captives had their own ideas about things and none would cooperate with Bennet’s need to catalogue the events or even get names.

Touring the perimeter of the area where he’d picked up Peter, Noah found Sylar’s handiwork — a dozen or so nearly hypothermic snipers spread out around the epicenter of the burgeoning earthquake. They been bound hand and foot with their own pants and had ammunition cartridges between their teeth, with tape over their mouths. Sylar was a sadistic bastard but he’d left them all alive. The only casualties that day were the people Noah had killed when Rebel had shut down the power. Everyone else dispersed when the ground started shaking. The suited man who’d been in charge of the compound was nowhere to be found.

“Go on and tell me the bad news. I have a feeling I already know. I dreamt again last night.”

“Oh?” Noah said. “Keep me updated.”

“Alright, Noah,” she chided. “Sylar is alive, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“That means that Peter is, too.”

“That’s right.” Noah answered.

“Well I suppose it didn’t turn out too badly," Angela said, and she sounded satisfied with the outcome despite the failure to eliminate Sylar, "or it would be all over the news. I saw a local report about a possible natural gas explosion that rattled some homes and businesses in Virginia.”

“That’s the story I planted.”

“Well done, then, Noah. Please come see me when you return.”

***

  
Peter and Sylar flew back to New York with Claire after leaving the compound, with a quick stop to buy Peter a new coat since his had been ruined. Sandra Bennet was in town with Doug, Lyle and Mr. Muggles and Claire asked to be dropped off at the hotel where they were staying.

Back in their own building at last, Sylar entered the apartment first. “Well that was nuts,“ Peter started to say but the rest of the sentence never left his mouth. Sylar spun the instant Peter shut the door, yanked him forward by the lapels of his new coat and walked him backwards until his back was pressed against the wall. Their faces were so close Peter could see the gold flecks in Sylar’s irises. He didn’t appreciate being manhandled but he was too shocked to protest.

“Don’t ever do that to me again!” Sylar barked.

He wasn’t even using telekinesis, Peter noted, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Do what?”

“Die!”

“Yeah well I didn’t exactly have that on my calendar.” Peter chuckled. “Come on, let go of me.”

“Never.” Sylar crushed his mouth to Peter’s, teased his tongue and mauled his way across Peter’s throat to his collarbone and up the side of his neck. “Not letting you go,” Sylar growled before returning to Peter’s mouth. What had begun as irritating with the lapel grab had morphed into sexy as hell. Peter struggled to keep up with the passionate attack that had come out of nowhere but Sylar’s mouth was everywhere.

“Oh yeah? What happened to not chasing me anymore?” He teased, shoving his hands up the back of Sylar’s shirt while daring in the midst of the hot make-out session to bring up the unresolved argument.

“I’m not going to.” Sylar kissed the base of Peter’s throat. “You’re going to stop running.” He nipped at the top of Peter’s shoulder. “No more of your games.” Now his mouth was sucking at the side of Peter’s neck.

Despite the sexy assault, the words were challenging. “My feelings aren’t a game, Sylar.”

“Peter,” Sylar said, stopping to make eye contact. “Let me preface this with all due respect and affection: fuck your feelings. You need to feel less with your head and more with your body. Quit worrying, over-thinking and moralizing and just … be.” As if to persuade Peter of the superiority of this concept, Sylar kissed, nipped, bit and sucked a tingling trail from just beneath Peter’s ear to the top of his shoulders, all the while rolling his hips to rub their matching boners together.

“I think I see what you mean,” Peter quipped, between breaths that were accelerating to flat out panting.

“I knew you would,” Sylar said, pulling Peter’s shirt over his head to continue the expedition.

Eventually Sylar’s shirt came off and Peter gave back what he was receiving, delighting in running his fingers through the irresistible masculine chest hair. Peter’s pants went down next and after crouching to free Peter’s feet, Sylar tasted and touched his way back up to Peter’s mouth and then they reversed roles when Peter pushed Sylar’s pants down, teasing with his tongue until Sylar pleaded for mercy.

They made love against the wall, with Sylar’s telekinesis and Peter’s strong legs around the man’s waist holding him in place. “You are mine,” Sylar said, thrilling Peter with the sexy possessiveness of those words. He watched Sylar’s eyes roam his face and then the man’s lips were on his forehead. “Mine.” Now he was kissing Peter’s eyelids. “Mine.” And his nose, chin and cheeks. “Mine, mine, mine.” Lips. “Mmmmm.”

“Say it, Peter.” Sylar demanded, thrusting hard as they both neared the edge of the abyss. “You belong to me. Say it!”

Panting, Peter acquiesced. “I’m yo — oh god, yeaaahhh,” he called out when he felt the sharp edges of Sylar’s teeth on his neck and within moments, he had pulled Sylar down with him, spiraling into one singular point of erotic collapse.

Hours later, they lay side by side in bed, relaxed, their bodies just touching but the urgency spent for now. “You never really said it, you know,” Sylar remarked as he lay with one arm folded under his head. “I want to hear you say that you’re mine.”

“That means something to you, huh?” Peter asked, admiring Sylar’s strong profile. “I thought it was just, y’know, heat of the moment kind of talk.”

Sylar came up on one elbow and captured Peter’s gaze with his own beautiful, intense brown eyes. It was humbling for Peter to be the object of such a desirous expression, not sexual at the moment, but wanting, longing.

“I’ve already waited five years for you. I don’t care that you haven’t forgiven me.” Sylar’s voice softened, more tender than Peter had ever heard him be and it sent tendrils of affection and gratitude straight through the walls Peter had built up around his heart. “You don’t have to say you love me. I’ve got all the time in the world, Peter, and I can wait as long as it takes but I don’t want to chase you if this isn’t where you want to be. Just tell me that one thing, that this is what you want, right now. To be here and nowhere else. With me.”

“It is.” Peter said, his defensive shell cracking open at how incredibly wanted he felt. It was everything he had ever needed, craved, and hadn’t gotten from his family, to be this cared for, possessed and protected. Nathan had come the closest of all to loving Peter the way he had needed and his brother had tried to take care of him. But Nathan had been compromised by fear, even before abilities had shown up, and Sylar? He wasn’t afraid of anything except the one thing Peter could do something about just by being with him. It made sense. They complemented each other. He and Sylar were two pieces of an otherwise unfinished puzzle.

His family would have to deal with it. Hadn’t his mother listened to him pouring his ordeal out in her perfect, spotless kitchen? Even if he hadn’t specified to her what their relationship was (and surely if she hadn’t known then, Noah had to have since filled her in), she had been aware that Sylar had become important to Peter. That hadn’t stopped her from plotting to kill him, to deprive Peter of the only anchor he had. _For my own good_ , he thought bitterly. It was always for his mother’s twisted idea of what was good for everyone else. Always with the fear that drove the lies and the “necessary” betrayals that created the very problems she claimed she was trying to prevent. Sylar would never scheme to save Peter from himself. No, he’d be right there by Peter’s side, helping Peter to accomplish what his heart called him to do. If he thought Peter was wrong, he’d just say so.

It was the most precious gift Peter had ever been given, to finally be this special. “I do. I’m all yours, Sylar.”

  
***

Claire was the only loose end in Peter’s newfound resolve to give a relationship with Sylar a chance, out here in reality where people would know. His mother and Noah could go to hell but he still cared about Claire’s opinion. He wanted her friendship. She was the only true family he had left. His ex sister-in-law, with whom Peter had always had a warm rapport, had kept him at arm’s length since long before Nathan’s death. It had only grown worse since then and now? That door, no doubt, was forever closed to him. Peter had continued to call to speak to his nephews after the divorce and he sent gifts and cards when he remembered, when he wasn’t trapped inside the body of a homicidal special on Level Five or forced to board a plane for god knew where, bound and drugged. The phone calls would end and the gifts would be returned when Heidi found out about Sylar, of that Peter was certain. And while it hurt to lose Nathan’s boys and that connection to his brother, there wasn’t much he could do about it except hope that someday, when they were older, Monty and Simon might seek him out.

So when Claire called Peter a week after he had left her at her mother’s hotel, saying she had big news, he made time to meet her at the address she gave him.

Claire met Peter outside a pre-war building downtown, about a dozen blocks from his apartment. She led him through the glass fronted entry and up three flights of stairs to a door that she opened with a key attached to a silver unicorn keychain. She had given up the brown contact lenses and her blue-green eyes were bright with mischief.

“What do you think? My mom helped me find it.” she asked when she had opened the door to an empty apartment with a battered but newly polished floor and two narrow windows at the far end that looked down on the street below.

Peter looked at Claire wonderingly and with more than a little relief. He had expected that he and Sylar would be putting her up for at least a short while longer, until she felt ready to go back to her life and her own off-campus apartment. He hadn’t been looking forward to the awkwardness of that arrangement.

He glanced around the apartment. It was just the one room and a tiny kitchen. The bathroom was old but clean, with a giant cast iron tub and black and white tile. Nodding his approval, he said, “I like it. What brought this on?”

“I figured I should live near you so I can help with your institute, like you asked.” A shy smile spread across her face. “The student thing will be my cover.”

Peter was too overwhelmed to say anything. Instead he resorted to what he had always done when words failed: he hugged the person who’d made him feel that way.

“You’re sure — ?” He held Claire by her shoulders and studied her face for signs of doubt. His meaning was clear and he didn’t mean to reduce Sylar to the status of someone whose name couldn’t be said, but Claire’s disapproval had been evident. She had been sympathetic to Peter’s tale of five years trapped in the mind of his worst enemy and was grudgingly accepting of Sylar being in Peter’s apartment, until he had shared that final detail. It shouldn’t have mattered. It was the five years that were important, eight years if Sylar’s three years alone counted and for Peter they did. People could be influenced by others even in their absence. For Sylar, it was that very absence that had wrought profound changes. Peter showing up had only helped put Sylar on a path he had already been trying to find.

“I’ll adjust. You said it yourself. I’m resourceful, right? I’m not saying he and I are ever going to be friends…”

“No, that’s okay. I mean, it’s great. No, that’s not what I —“ Peter tripped over his words, delighted to have Claire on board and afraid of saying anything that might change her mind. The most important relationship in his life had died with Nathan. Claire was one of the few people he had left, other than Sylar and Emma, that he trusted and could be himself with. No hiding, no pretense or plots. “You see it, though, don’t you? That he’s changed?”

“Don’t push your luck, Peter. Tolerating his existence is as good as it's ever going to be so don’t bother trying to butter me up about him. But yeah. I see it.” She wrinkled her nose with distaste but her expression softened with her next admission. “What makes me even willing to put up with him is that he loves you. That’s what I see.” Claire reached out to touch Peter’s cheek and his heart melted at that gesture. It spoke of acceptance and the friendship he’d hoped to sustain. “You could be in worse hands, I guess.”

***

  
Angela supposed hell would freeze over before Peter would call her. She suspected that she had finally succeeded in putting a wedge between herself and her son that couldn’t be removed. Not even by removing Sylar. God knows she’d tried and she wasn’t quite ready to accept there was no way for her to influence that relationship. To think, she had been worried about Peter and the deaf young woman. What she would give to rewind time and rearrange fate to have that be her biggest problem. She had been as blind and naive as her eternally idealistic son. For now, though, she sought to make what amends she could.

It had been weeks since she had seen or spoken to Peter. She’d left numerous messages on his phone and had finally given up hoping he’d call back. He probably erased the messages without listening. That didn’t stop her from calling, but she no longer bothered with leaving voicemails. He would know she’d called. She even considered texting, though that wasn’t her forte. He would probably delete those, too.

Still, she had to try. She was his mother, after all. He couldn’t ignore her forever. Could he? Would he? Surely if Peter could forgive his worst enemy...

A late winter storm was pelting the city with snow the day Angela had arranged for a car to take her to Mercy Heights Hospital. She knew Peter was working that day, having used her resources to obtain his schedule and timing her visit for the tail end of his shift, when he’d be in the hospital completing his paperwork. The forecast called for minimal accumulation of the snow, which was why she was persuaded to proceed with her plan, despite the weather.

By the time the car arrived at the hospital, two or three inches inch of snow had fallen. It was tapering off now in big, sloppy flakes that made Angela recall happier times, skating at Rockefeller Center, or strolling through Central Park after church with her family, watching little Peter catch snowflakes on his tongue and shushing Nathan when he teased Peter that some of the flakes were sugary. “Mmm, I got one, Pete. Keep trying, you’ll get one eventually.” _Oh Nathan. I miss you so._

Snow couldn’t stand up to the heavy traffic of the city’s streets and sidewalks, and already the pavement was smeared with gray slush as Angela exited the town car, but the overhang in front of the hospital was covered in a layer of snow and the building’s dark exterior made a lovely contrast with the snow underlining its windows.

She spotted Peter’s partner first, laughing with the nurses at the desk. What a nice young man and so handsome. If Peter had to choose a man, not why him? _Oh Peter. Have I lost you, too?_

When Peter came through the double doors just beyond the desk, it was his bow-legged stride Angela recognized first and then the way he always tilted his head when rounding a corner, as if banking into the turn. Such a funny, endearing quirk.

Peter’s partner spoke to him and gestured in her direction and Peter turned around. He didn’t seem surprised, nor was he happy to see her. If anything his face wore that fake patient look that Angela knew meant he wasn’t feeling very patient at all.

"Hi, Mrs. Petrelli. How are you?” Hesam said.

“Hesam, dear. How lovely to see you. Hello, Peter.”

“Mom,” was Peter’s only greeting before taking her arm and guiding her to an empty file room. “Why are you here?”

Angela took in the sight of Peter greedily, noting his hair was too long as always and brushing a a shock of it away from his eyes. Peter flinched impatiently and stepped away from her touch. With a sigh that she made no attempt to hide, she told him why she’d come.

“Nathan’s headstone is ready. There’s going to be a ceremony. I hoped you would accompany me to the cemetery. Heidi will be there with the boys. Perhaps you could persuade Claire to come?”

Peter closed his eyes and shaded his face with his hand, turning to lean against an open file cabinet.

“I’m not going to travel with you but I’ll be there, alright? I’ll ask Claire. I’m sure she’ll go.” He didn’t look at Angela.

“That will be fine. You’re not going to bring _him_?”

Peter’s eyes snapped up at her, and Angela could see she had made him angry. “Of course not! He wouldn’t go even if I wanted him to. Jeez.”

She didn’t think Peter would be so foolish, nor heartless enough to bring that man to his brother’s ceremony but then she had never expected him to befriend Nathan’s murderer let alone have an affair with him.

“I’ll be going now. I’ll send you the details.”

Peter nodded and turned to leave the room. “Peter?” Angela stopped him although she knew she had probably overstepped her bounds already and shouldn’t ask. Did she even want to know? But ah, she had never been able to resist the allure of what her dreams would tell her no matter how devastating the future might be. This wasn’t a dream nor was it in some distant future. Of course she was going to ask.

He stopped and looked over his shoulder, clearly eager to escape her presence. “What?” Peter snapped, then repeated it more softly. Even now her son’s kinder impulses were at war with his emotions.

“Are you in love with him?”

Peter stared at her for a moment, unmoving, then shook his head and looked at the floor, his back to Angela. She heard him sigh and as she stepped beside him, he lifted his head and defiant hazel eyes met hers. “I am. He loves me, too. He’s good for me. I don’t expect you to believe that or to care but it’s the truth.” Angela watched her baby boy, this sad, angry, beautiful man who was her son, walk away from her without another word or look in her direction. After everything she had endured, from the loss of her parents and sister so long ago, to the countless tragedies she’d witnessed since then, real and dreamt, the monstrous cruelty of her husband and, worst of all, the death of her precious firstborn child, this rejection by her own only surviving child was a wrenching pain that she didn’t know how to bear. It was all pain and she’d borne every piercing stitch that formed the tapestry of her past. But she was older now and no longer as strong as she’d been. Too much loss had worn her down and Angela struggled to fathom how she would accommodate this new reality.

***

Angela met Noah for Japanese food at a new restaurant on 72nd Street that she had been wanting to try. It had been weeks since the mission and she listened as Noah explained how busy he had been making sure all of the loose ends were tucked away. René had helped him by blotting out the memories of the Russians who had been present at the compound in Virginia. Neither Noah nor René had determined which of the snipers they captured had shot Peter or if that person was even among their prisoners. It didn’t matter now. Peter had thankfully survived. What Moscow had learned about the failure of their scheme and might do next was anyone’s guess, and Noah was of the opinion that it was only a matter of time before they tried again. He told Angela that he hoped it would be sometime far in the future, when he was too old for it to be his problem. Angela’s reaction to that was the first time she had laughed in a long time. She could hardly remember anything as frivolous as laughter.

Samuel Sullivan had been handed over to the carnies, in accordance with Peter’s wishes, not that Peter had stayed around nor followed up to find out. The carnies assured Noah that they had a plan and Noah was a man who liked plans. The fewer specials in law enforcement custody, the better, he said to Angela and she agreed. One of us, one of them was still the best strategy.

Noah lived in New York now, having given up his Boston apartment to be closer to Claire in the hopes of repairing their tattered relationship. Angela, too, was suffering the fallout of their failed attempt to eliminate Sylar. Neither Claire nor Peter had much to do with her, though both had attended the ceremony to place Nathan’s headstone.

“I don’t hate you, Mom,” Peter had said to her that day when she approached him in yet another futile bid for reconciliation. “I hate what you’ve done, what you keep doing. And since I don’t believe you’re ever going to stop, I’m going to stay as far away from it as I can.”

Even then, he’d kissed her goodbye after the ceremony and when one lone tear managed to slip down her cheek, he’d gently brushed it away. Such undeserved kindness only made it more difficult to bear her loss. She wished he’d rail at her, shout and call her names, the way Nathan had. “Ma, you’re evil,” Nathan had accused her after Peter exploded like fireworks over New York. If only Peter would purge the anger from his system and return to the loving embrace of his family.

Angela found herself avoiding her favorite shopping and dining spots downtown. She didn’t think she could bear running into Peter or, worse, Gabriel, as she had now taken to calling Peter’s … partner, when she called him anything at all. She couldn’t say why she had reverted to his given name. For the most part, she tried not to think of him. Worst of all would be to see them together, especially if she spotted them first, catching them when they were unaware of scrutiny. No, that she could not abide.

“Look at what’s become of us, Noah. We had the world by the balls once,” Angela said, chuckling when Noah’s eyes widened at her profanity. “Don’t be such a prude. I raised two sons. You have no idea the language I’ve heard. And used on rare occasions.”

“Do you think our children will ever forgive us?” he asked. “Even Lyle hardly speaks to me. He’s taken Claire’s side. Imagine that!”

Poor Noah. He looked more exhausted than Angela could ever remember seeing him. He’d tried to retire more than once, in vain efforts to salvage the fraying shreds of his marriage and family. Look how that had turned out. Perhaps he should get a dog; isn’t that what lonely people with too much time to think did? Maybe Angela should, too, and then she and Noah could meet for dog walks in the park and reminisce about old times, before any of their children knew about abilities. The thought amused her in a tragicomic way before realizing Noah was waiting for an answer to his question and looking at her with the same pity she’d been entertaining on his behalf.

“I don’t know. We will just have to give it time.”

Noah appeared to agree with that. After all, there was no more could they do short of having René obliterate their children’s memories, and Angela wasn’t crazy enough to try that again.

“You know, there’s one thing I’m curious about,” Angela said, “Charles Deveaux once said that Peter would be the most powerful of us all and given all that’s happened it makes no sense. Surely Charles couldn’t have been referring to the short time when Peter had his original ability. Sylar was an even match for him then and if anyone was most powerful, surely it was Arthur. I don’t recall Charles ever being wrong. It makes me wonder if Peter has yet to fulfill his destiny.”

Noah shrugged indifferently, though he seemed to consider, if only out of politeness, what Angela had said. Fate was never his area of expertise and Angela supposed she could hardly expect him to take as much of an interest as she did in her son’s future. Claire was his priority.

He took a sip of his sake and gazed at a spot just beyond Angela’s shoulder with an unfocused look in his eyes. “Maybe,” he said then, slowly, as if choosing his words with care, “Maybe Peter’s destiny is to tame Sylar.”

Angela’s hand went still around the chopsticks she was holding and even Hiro Nakamura couldn’t have stopped time with more precision. To think that such an idea had come from Noah, who wasn’t even one of them, who had no abilities at all, whose fate was to have his entire life shaped and irrevocably changed by powers he didn’t possess. The possibility he had suggested had never even occurred to her. It was preposterous! What a horrible thought that the illicit and disgusting relationship with Sylar, Nathan’s murderer, was her son’s destiny.

Angela hardly knew how to answer that other than to give Noah a withering glare, which he wisely chose to overlook in favor of a renewed interest in his meal.

“How are you sleeping these days?” he inquired after they had eaten in silence for several minutes, as if his previous comment had never happened.

“Oh, you know the dreams never stay away for very long. I don’t believe they ever will. They’re not always meaningful, you know. They can often be rather mundane but the most recent ones —“

“Angela?” Noah interjected. With his chopsticks in mid-air dangling a captive morsel of sashimi, he met Angela’s eyes, determination shining through his lenses or maybe it was a trick of the light giving the horn-rimmed glasses a burnished glow. It was always hard to tell with Noah.

“Yes, Noah?”

“No offense, but don't tell me,” he said, with finality. “I don’t want to know.”

***


	10. Chapter 10

Epilogue

On a late winter day when the wind was strong enough to poke its cold fingers through all but the warmest of coats, Sylar called Peter and told him to bundle up and meet him after work at a downtown address on the west side of the city.

Sylar spotted Peter approaching before Peter saw him. He liked to watch Peter when his friend was unaware of being seen, to see what Peter looked at and guess by the set of his shoulders and the pace of his stride how his day might have been. Even in this teeming city of eight million people, Peter stood out. He always would for Sylar who had known him in so many guises. It was still strange how their real encounters were layered with memories of a Peter that didn’t belong to him and never would. He wasn’t Peter’s brother no matter how it felt to remember him as a baby, a child, a teenager and a young man whose abilities were just emerging. He wasn’t Nathan and could never replace him. Sylar had made peace with that and had learned to make space for Nathan.

Or perhaps it was Nathan whose memories, unwanted and despised for so long, had helped to lead Sylar out of the twisted maze of his past. It was a horrible thought, monstrous in its implications. _I don’t know who I am without you_. That was still true, for the part of Nathan that lived on in Sylar and for Sylar himself.

It was the kind of thing best kept private. Peter had forgiven him at last but Sylar had no illusions that there was such a thing as closure. The loss he had inflicted on Peter wasn’t like a pothole that could be filled in and smoothed out, even if Peter took regeneration and lived forever as Sylar so often asked him to do. It was the closest he ever came to begging. Time didn’t heal scars or erase crimes and justice was a myth. All they could do was move forward — such a cliché — and hope the suffering could be borne and that new and better memories would crowd the more painful ones to the background.

This building, in front of which Sylar waited for Peter, was part of that new beginning, a surprise for Peter that he had been planning for months. It was the first viable location Sylar had identified for the institute. Until recently, the building had been abandoned, but it had been purchased by a cooperative of artists and they were fixing it up. It was near a pier, which meant less traffic than in the center of the city, not far from the downtown bridges and of course the river, offering multiple ways to secret people in and out of the city. Later, they’d find other facilities, so they could close up shop any time things got too hot. Sylar had an idea for a second location down in Asbury Park and eventually they would move on to places overseas, too, but that would have to wait. For now, the artists could use funding to afford this place and Sylar’s Midas touch would help with that. The artistic energy here might suffuse the place with positive feelings that would make a home-away-from-home for confused and frightened specials. Sure, artists were temperamental, but that was because they cared so much. Peter would laugh at such a corny idea coming from Sylar, but Sylar was sure he would like it, too.

Peter’s face brightened at the sight of Sylar leaning against the building’s brick exterior with his hands in his coat pockets.

“Hey,” he said, and gestured at the building. “Is this what you wanted to show me? I hope so because it’s great.”

“I’m glad you approve.” Sylar grinned. “I thought you might. Let’s walk around so you can see everything.”

They strolled the perimeter of the building and admired its size and solid brick construction. The wind was blowing Peter’s hair in every direction, amusing Sylar when whole sections of it lifted every so often like the glossy black feathers of a raven about to take flight. His own hair probably looked equally ridiculous; no amount of gel could withstand the ferocity of the day’s breeze.

Peter’s phone ringing interrupted Sylar’s musing. When Peter looked at the screen, he declined the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

“Mommy dearest again?” Sylar asked and when Peter nodded, he remarked that Angela — or “that woman” as he rarely referred to her by name — was relentless. “I see where your persistence comes from. Do you think you’ll ever forgive her?”

Peter shrugged. “Maybe. Someday.”

Sylar watched Peter’s expression for signs of regret or sadness. He knew what it was to be adrift with no family and Peter’s family had once been close. He had to believe that Peter would forgive his mother in time and that it wouldn’t require five years alone together in an empty city. “D’you miss her?”

Peter pushed his hair off his face, a fruitless effort given the weather but the wind had quieted for the moment and now Sylar could see the dark hazel eyes looking back at him. “Not as much as I thought I would. What I miss is what I thought I had, who she used to be before I knew about abilities, when I trusted her to be my mom, y’know? It’s okay. I’m happy with what I have now.” The meaningful smile he flashed was like a balloon for Sylar’s ego.

“Gosh, Peter, it’s almost like you think I’m special,” he snarked. Peter’s compliment charmed him and the smile, well, but Sylar was still adjusting to such direct and honest flattery. He hadn’t lost the tendency to mask discomfort with sarcasm, though his remark had lacked any bite. In fact, Sylar realized too late that it was sappier than what Peter had said and only compounded his embarrassment.

Peter laughed, whether at Sylar’s goofy comment or his reddening cheeks (I’m not blushing, it’s the wind!), Sylar wasn’t sure but Peter was smiling again as he bumped their shoulders together. “Yeah, almost.”

The time had come for Sylar to tell Peter his secret. Would Peter understand that it was for him, that Sylar risking his sobriety was only because of his unerring faith in Peter’s mission? It was more than a mission. It was a calling. Peter would do great things. Sylar saw that potential as surely as if he’d had the dreaded future-dreaming ability of Peter’s mother. To join Peter in this endeavor was the ultimate redemption, elevating Sylar’s recent actions to a quest that couldn’t possibly be wrong. It was almost holy and although Sylar didn’t believe in God, it was his belief in Peter that allowed him to even think such a thought with a straight face. Could Peter see that? Could he see that everything Sylar did and would do was a colossal “I love you” painted across the sky? Such words didn’t come to Sylar easily. Heartfelt declarations had never been his forte. It was Peter who was always blurting out his emotions. He hadn’t told Sylar he loved him in so many words but it was evident in how he’d valued their relationship above all others. Words didn’t matter. Actions did. Even Claire, whose disdain for Sylar remained palpable, grudgingly came to accept that they were together and she could either get on board or get lost. She’d chosen to stick around and was willing to work for the institute. Sylar’s admiration for Claire had grown despite the lack of reciprocal feelings on her part and what’s more, he trusted her to have Peter’s best interests at heart. Unlike Peter’s mother, Claire’s love was more evident in deeds than in empty platitudes. Anyone who loved Peter that much was okay by Sylar. He didn’t have to like her nor she him.

There was only one way to know how Peter would receive Sylar’s news.

“Peter, there’s something else I’ve been doing to lay the groundwork for the institute.” Sylar began. Already the wariness was transforming Peter’s face as he stopped walking and stood facing Sylar. His eyes met Sylar’s and held.

“Go on…” he said.

“We’ve talked about the abilities we’ll need to operate the institute in secret and I know we’re hoping we can recruit more than just Rebel and Claire but until then, I’ve been collecting abilities in a way I haven’t told you about.”

“What? No!” Darkness engulfed Peter’s face as his lowered brows shaded his eyes. His arms hung stiffly at his sides and his hands clenched. “Sylar. Please.” A pleading tone overtook his voice. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

“It’s for you. For us. Let me explain. It’s not what you think.”

“There is no us if you’re killing again.” Impulsive as ever, Peter didn’t wait around to hear any more. He grabbed Sylar’s hand, found what he wanted and shot into the sky. Within seconds he was no more than a dark speck on the cloudless horizon, leaving the hand Sylar had extended to touch him suspended in the empty space Peter had occupied. Heaving a sigh, Sylar took off after him, once again chasing the elusive Peter Petrelli.


End file.
